*All events are 21+ valid ID required for entry*
7 PM – Doors
8 PM – Show
BE YOUR OWN PET
When the four members of Be Your Own Pet stepped into a practice space in December, 2021,it had been more than a decade since they’d all been in the same room. The quartet had lastbeen together in London’s Heathrow airport, having just played to sold out rooms across the UK. Their trajectory had been fast—in the span of two years and starting when they were just 16,BYOP released two albums (via Thurston Moore’s Ecstatic Peace in the US and XL Recordingsin the UK), found themselves magazine cover stars, and played to ravenous crowds around theworld. But the flame might have burned too quickly and they decided to call it quits.
The quartet had been living in a pressure cooker—both to put on wild performances every nightand to keep up with the wild party lifestyle expected to come with their records. “You give abunch of teenagers some money and tell them to go on tour forever? It’s probably not thehealthiest thing,” guitarist Jonas Stein says. “I just felt like I could not maintain a healthy emotional status and craved stability.” Vocalist Jemina Pearl was facing her own layer of stressas the focal point of constant judgment and attention singing at the center of the stage—not tomention as the only woman in the group. “We were all under 21 and were partying our asses offall the time,” she says. “And I think people had this expectation that the Be Your Own Pet showwas gonna be crazy. We needed to be that spectacle every single night, and it was a lot for us to take on.”
2023 finds Be Your Own Pet not only back with a new album, but stronger than ever before. Due August 25, Mommy bolsters the group’s patented garage punk ferocity with matured songwriting, inspired musicianship, and a fervor to claim their space and define their future. “I’mnot your victim, I’m my own person/ I’m not some casualty, I set myself free,” Pearl roars on leadsingle “Hand Grenade”, propelled forward by a burst of guitar shrapnel from Stein and atime-bomb rhythm section courtesy of Vasquez and Eatherly. Born during the group’s first day ofwriting, the track is both a vicious rebuke of the sexism and abuse that pervades the musicworld and a steely refusal to be defined by it. “That song’s one of my little babies,” Pearl says. “By telling our stories and sharing our truth, we can gain power back from a situation where wefelt powerless.”