Be Your Own Pet - London Barfly - 2/2/06
4/5
By: Thomas Hannan
Buzz bands. The word 'buzz' is used for a reason. A buzz is an unpleasant sound. It's something you have to act on to make sure it doesn't eventually infuriate you, or, as all us live music fans hope in futility will eventually be the case when we inevitably develop the screeching sounds of tinnitus, in time drift into the background so we no longer pay attention to it. The problem for youngsters Be Your Own Pet, as we attendees bonded over in a pre-show discourse, is that the buzz seems, by today's standards at least (whereby tomorrow you can set up a MySpace page and by August we'll see you headlining Reading), to have been going on for rather a while.
One can only presume this is our fault rather than theirs, as they hammer across their point so convincingly, in a way that only a bunch of cocksure teenagers really can, that their continued, hopefully not perpetual status of 'next big thing' is something of a puzzle. A pleasant thing to have spurted from the wait for superstardom though has been that it's given the band a time to develop both as songwriters and performers. In both senses, this eats the band's Reading festival slot last summer for breakfast. There, it wasn't boring simply because it was so fast, so virulent, so damn loud. But we could tell you little about the songs. Here, it's they that first stand out, the new tracks from that eagerly anticipated March debut album, that make or break moment we pray has as much going for it as their set tonight contains. It's what they've needed all along - really corking tunes. And now, far from being just merely not boring, things actually get interesting.
Top marks on the execution, too. They lose nothing in the precision by playing it with pace, panache and nearly managing to punch each other in the face all the way through. Heck, standing still, they might just suck. The stage presence improves unabated, the swagger of youth refusing to leave, standing up as one of their most potent weapons against drunken male idiots, a sadly still necessary tool when your singer is an attractive woman. No longer tolerated with anger, these people now receive the shouting down they deserve. The Man is discussing banning smoking in places like this, apparently. Even more beneficial to the well-being of all would surely be to ban pricks like that.
A minor mishap, of which there are few. Technical hitches between songs, rare as they are, tend to be followed by sincere apologies for their momentary occurrence, so aware are the four of the need to keep the pace going. Given there's no set-list, the show's made up largely of crowd requests, and it's testament to the strength of their repertoire that nobody thinks of asking for the singles. It's when they do arrive that you notice not only their worth but the adequate status of the rest of the pack too. 'Hang on, it takes a minute to get ready,' offers Jemina before launching in to the recent 45 spasm of 'Let's Get Sandy', which incidentally takes a less than a minute to play, also. By the time 'Damn Damn Leash' is unleashed most of the crowd are on the stage hollering, as Johnny Borrell stands to our left, wishing his band were this much fun.
The collective moment of realisation should happen soon. We can't have there be too many more 'you can say you were there when...' moments. And we certainly can't have these kids going back to school.
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