[review 2008: favourites]

Welcome to Be Your Own Pet, a band that either isn’t old enough to know or else has decided to ignore the fact that people mature significantly in the years before and after your high school graduation. Get Awkward loses a bit of the ferocity from their debut, but otherwise the formula hasn’t changed very much: teenage boredom and rebellion, pierced occasionally by bouts of fucking shit up, all set to a bubblegum thrash punk sound set permanently on fast forward. And really, if you liked the first album, this is pretty much exactly what you were hoping for from Get Awkward: more of the goddamned same, please.

So let’s talk about what’s changed. Jemima Pearl sounds a bit gutsier this time around; she doesn’t sound quite so bratty this time around. If you’re lucky enough to have an import version of the album, you’ll also have three tracks missing from the US version that demonstrate a bit of range, namely the girl-group revenge murder story of “Becky.” But there are signs all over the place that behind the party/rebellion stuff are signs of a slightly more thoughtful approach: “Kelly Affair” is named after the band from Beyond the Valley of the Dolls, for example. And the whole album sounds less like an actual statement of adolescent life and more like a fun pretend version of the same. It’s pure escapism, which is why I never really bought the whole “Be Your Own Pet cannot be appreciated by anyone over 25″ comment. Of course they can; we’re the ones who still wish we were teenagers, and this is the perfect soundtrack.

I’m sorry, did you want me to talk about songs? Well, there’s nothing quite as vitriolic as “Girls on TV” or “Bicycle Bicycle You Are My Bicycle,” nor any lines quite as eminently quotable as “I’m an independent motherfucker, and I’m here to take your money / I’m wicked rad and I’m here to steal away your virginity.” But “Heart Throb” is probably one of the best songs they will ever write or play, and many of the tracks in the opening salvo are almost as good (”Kelly Affair” and “Becky” are two obvious examples). What undoes the album in the end is in part the same problem with the debut: it all goes on for slightly too long and starts to sound a bit generic by the end. And this time there isn’t a killer zombie song at the end to save it (that actually comes a bit earlier, in the form of “Zombie Graveyard Party”).

But none of that really matters because you aren’t even necessarily listening to the album for specific songs, but for that feel-good jolt of sun-drenched garage-punk goodness. Maybe when we get around to the third album, this inability to put together a complete album will become a problem; for now, Get Awkward is a great follow-up.