Be Your Own Pet! - Get Awkward

As The Skinny pointed out in last month's gig preview, Be Your Own Pet! are one band who definitely sound better in the flesh than they do through your speakers. And although they claim to have progressed from their self-titled debut LP, the Nashville band are still in the terrible twos stage of pop-punk development. The guitar playing is ramshackle, breathless and elementary in equal measure (granted, not always a bad thing), while Jemima Pearl's vocals, though intentionally erratic, quickly become as soothing as a baby crying through a megaphone. The double-speed opener Super Soaked sums it up with the lines "I don't wanna have to grow up" and "I don't wanna have responsibility." Be Your Own Pet! probably think such posturing is endearingly 'punk', when it's really just 'My Little Punk'. If they want to dodge gimmickry they should drop the act and entertain that most terrifying of concepts: maturity. [Nick Mitchell]