Music reviews. CD reviews. Critically hip!

In an effort to kill two birds with one stone, I opted to listen to the newest Be Your Own Pet album, Get Awkward, while I was at the gym. Best idea ever. If ever there was an album that’s sole purpose was to make you want to thrash about and/or raise you heart rate, Get Awkward would be it.

Although they’re already on their second album, Be Your Own Pet currently has an average band member age of 19 (which I learned from the handy info cards included with the cd in lieu of a booklet) and their youthful exuberance has yet to be extinguished. Every song is pretty transparent and self-explanatory, with appropriately juvenile titles like Food Fight! and What‘s Your Damage? Lyrically, they keep there subject matter pretty basic - broken hearts, flirting, eating brains (see Zombie Graveyard Party!) - but paired with a brutal honesty that can only come from people young enough to not care about subtlety.

Lead vocalist Jemima Pearl doesn’t sing so much as alternate between emotive howls, guttural shrieks and a spitfire delivery that runs circles around the listener. Just try to keep up as she swiftly shouts “I can see you looking and I really really want you to/ I don’t know if you notice but I’m looking straight at you,” (Heart Throb). And it’s not just Pearl’s vocals that give the impression of urgency. There’s a frantic energy to the every track on Get Awkward, almost like the guitarist and bassist, Jonas Stein and Nathan Vasquez respectively, were dared to play as fast as they possibly could.

With Get Awkward, Be Your Own Pet didn’t fall for the sophomore album cliché of growing more “mature” or becoming more “experimental.” Instead they opted to perfect what they’re already known for: dizzyingly raucous, short-but-sweet punk rock songs that are more concerned with being fun than being taken seriously.