Be Your Own PET

Be Your Own Pet

[3/5] Forget sugar, spice and everything nice: Jemina Pearl Abegg, vocalist for Be Your Own Pet, is made of sass, attitude and hellfire–just like the Nashville quartet’s self-titled debut. For the most part, the band’s jagged guitars and bludgeoning backbeats play by the punk rulebook (the lurching “Fuuuuuun” hotrods like early Bikini Kill; “Girls On TV” is pure Class of ’76), and most of their songs are barely two minutes long. But BYOP’s real star is the 19-year-old Abegg, who represents the latest in a long line of screaming females–X-Ray Spex’s Poly Styrene, X’s Exene Cervenka, Bikini Kill’s Kathleen Hanna–and who isn’t shy about yelping lines such as “I’m an independent motherfucker/And I’m here to take your money” like a woman possessed. Even the disc’s lone slow number (the Breeders-esque “October, First Account”) finds Abegg sweetly crooning, “I will bring anything for three/With a dusty smile and a loaded gun.” Now that’s fearless.
(ECSTATIC PEACE!/UNIVERSAL) Annie Zaleski