Be Your Own Pet
'Get Awkward'
Trashy, noisy youth clean up their act with disappointing results.
On this band's 2006 debut, teen singer Jemima Pearl's imaginative lines about love as a scrap between a "wildcat" and a "worm," as well as her saucy suggestion that her boyfriend was a "parasol," emerged from a blur of garage-rock destruction. Here, the lyrics are unfortunately upfront. Pearl, now 20, sings about sleepover drama ("You told my secrets / And it caused me a lot of pain") and small-town tedium (um, they're from Nashville) in bland, white-bread terms. More unfortunately, Get Awkward's forced rhymes and attitude sound almost calculated, like someone set the band on a Paramore path -- though that's pretty funny if you picture longtime booster Thurston Moore giving the lecture.
