Be Your Own Pet - be your own Pet Album Review

Be Your Own Pet
'be your own Pet'
XL Recordings
27th March

OMG! Deez r like da bestest band I eva heard!! So I doubt those were some label scouts exact words but gleeful A&R pant wetting aside, be your own PET were always going to have to face the firing squad. Four precocious 17 year olds thrust into the limelight on the back of CDR demo 'Damn Damn Leash' saw the sort of fawning delirium now afforded to the Arctic Monkeys. A year later and their latest CDR, decidedly more professional, is a raucous freewheeling caterwaul of a debut.

15 tracks of volatile guitar fuzz fuelled by lead singer Jemina Pearl's cutesy tantrum vocals and Jamin Orall's tirelessly frenzied drumming has this long player brimming with single potential. Opener 'Thresher's flail' has the kind of stadium rock build up Motley Crue could call their own before launching into the blisteringly energetic sound associated with a byoP live show. With Yeah Yeah Yeah's comparisons understandably rife, both albums incidentally are released on March 28th, you wonder if the towns big enough for the both of them. Who cares?! There'll be a hell of a ruckus anyway.

Playful, mischievous and incessantly rampant it's the soundtrack to; trashing the mall, careering down the steepest hill without holding the handlebars, kicking the neighbour's cat, hiding in the girl's locker room and letting the cop's tyres down. The punk funk laden 'Adventure' represents their most accessible moment to date, complete with wavering Karen O vocals – it's the song Yeah Yeah Yeahs didn't release. There's the bass buzz and whining guitar of 'Wildcat', the 58 second blitzkrieg of speedcore percussion and yapped vocals that is 'Let's get sandy (Big Problem)' whilst 'October, First Account' see further shades of YYY's with some finger pickin' bass and ragged off beat rhythms yet this album still has some legs. The triple header of the breathless 'Love your Shotgun' the barking, feisty 'Fill my Pill' and the feel good stamp of album closer 'Ouch' should make March 28th a significant date in your diary. It's the destructive energy of punk meets unbridled youthful exuberance and the end result is a sound so uncompromisingly thrashing that, tantalisingly threatens to go drastically wrong. It doesn't and they don't seem to care anyway. An astoundingly good debut.

Reef Conroy