"Drug runs and beer busts, it's all I know/ I don't wanna grow up and have to let go," barked Jemina Pearl on Be Your Own Pet's second and final LP, Get Awkward. "I feel the pressure to change my ways/ All I see are more dark days." By definition, BYOP was a fleeting endeavor-- a band of fuck-off teens destined to flame out rather than linger on. They wrote songs about food fights, robbing banks, and, like, adventuring; when Pearl declared, "We ride bikes, cars are for idiots," narrow side lanes turned into unfuckwithable alleys of cool. To BYOP, concerns about contentment, love, and mortality were laugh lines. They even turned typical punk rebellion into a cartoon farce.
"Next year I'll be 21/ So look out, world, 'cause I wanna have fun," sang Pearl on BYOP's "Super Soaked". Now 22, Pearl's name is front and center on Break It Up, her solo bow recorded with BYOP drummer John Eatherly. The zombies and pizza parties of yore are replaced with predicted "dark days," though this Brooklyn by-way-of Nashville badass is still thrashing against maturity as best as she can.
Case in point, here's the singer describing a recent altercation with a fan: "dude fucked up during the last song by flicking lit cigarettes at me. not cool. i kicked his ass, there was blood, and everyone at the show cheered because he sucked." In Pearl's world, there's black and white-- and maybe some red. Things that suck get what they deserve, whether they're asshole fans, jerky boyfriends, or simply the notion of growing up. She's an old-school punk in that there's little pretense; she thrashes about onstage because she wants to and not because she thinks it looks cool. According to her Ecstatic Peace label head (and Break It Up guest guitarist/vocalist) Thurston Moore, she's not "out to impress anybody; she [is] just kicking total ass." He should know.
As far as ass-kicking goes, there's plenty of it here. Nearly every song is marked with a rough-edged riff from another era, whether it be surf, garage, or girl group. And Pearl's guttural wail is intact. But there are no straight-up, minute-long goofs, and instead of raging on about pitch-perfect nonsense and suburban malaise, Pearl often turns inward. The self-reflection can be reassuring, as on the fizzy, Dave Sitek-assisted Gemini ode "Ecstatic Appeal", or deeply troubling, as on the laborious downer "Retrograde", where voices in the back of Pearl's mind tell her to "go on, cut a little bit deeper, see how far we can go." The LP's best reflective track finds a semi-happy middle ground between those two extremes; "No Good" has the singer lambasting herself for being lazy-- "I've been trying for so long, can't get shit done"-- with the song acting as a fitful solution to the idleness.
Break It Up isn't all introspection set to a Stooges beat-- there are still some hell-raiser cartoons. "Looking for Trouble" starts off with a classic rock'n'roll quotable ("Never sold my soul to the devil/ Gave it away for free") but its troublemaker shtick is a little tired-- even Pearl sounds edgeless, as if she's bored with being bad. Better is "I Hate People", a knowing caricature co-starring Iggy Pop in full-on crooner mode. "I hate people, and you do too," they sing, relishing their mutual loathing while a pepped-up Motown back beat adds another wink.
Faced with a child star's dilemma of symbolizing infinite irresponsibility, Pearl dips into adulthood admirably on Break It Up. Her frankness makes the record a difficult proposition-- if she continued to shirk and joke like she was 17, it would be dishonest; turning in a collection of mid-tempo songs about twentysomething angst would negate everything she's done leading up to this point. The record never takes a breather, though you get the feeling it's only a matter of time before she attempts her own "Maps". And she'll still make you bleed if the mood strikes her. But the breakup of Pearl's old band has seemingly given her a taste of finality. Even a speck of nostalgia turns up on the wistful, winning "Nashville Shores". But instead of glossing over the dubiousness of her hometown's seedy watering holes, she highlights all the "dirty water," "children's cries," and "easy girls" that make it live. "Nashville shores, it's all we got," she concludes, proudly.
