by JOHNSON CUMMINS

The press is only too eager to spill oceans of ink on bands, but if the hype is served up too early they will often fall under the weight of their own press clippings. For example, how many of us actually purchased the last Strokes record? Uh-huh, thought so.

One of the bands that’s getting a ton of media attention right now is Nashville’s Be Your Own Pet, with stats that prove to be just too inviting for the insatiable rock press.

Check it out: Now in the autumn years of their teens, this foursome has already garnered the attention of BBC taste makers and tons of glossy press, packed their CMJ and SXSW showcases, and signed to Thurston Moore’s Ecstatic Peace with the ink on his Universal deal barely dry, all on the strength of a couple of seven-inch singles and a CDR with limited distribution.

This would usually be the end of a band that has yet to release a full-length album, but their debut easily lives up to the hyperbole. Their sense of punk rock serves as a breath of fresh air, keeping the technical prowess of the hardcore set at arm’s length and packing in all of the chaos, frenetic energy and teenage fun that marks any good punk rawk record.

“I don’t know why we’ve been getting so much attention,” says singer Jemina Pearl Abegg about her sudden dance in the limelight. “People bring up our age a lot but it’s not unusual for young people to be in bands, it’s just that they don’t usually write about it in Rolling Stone or whatever. People concentrate on this hype thing a bit too much. If it all goes away, we’ll still be playing somewhere. It’s not like we’re doing this to sell records, we do it because it’s fun. If people forget about us and stop buying our records after a while, that’s fine.”

With their debut record only in the teething stage, B.Y.O.P. are still largely known for their live show. Abegg explains that some of their most exciting shows went down during the band’s salad days at a local pizza parlour in Nashville called Guido’s. “With some exceptions, the audiences now don’t go as crazy as they used to at Guido’s. It’s closed now and I’m sure there will be another place like it. But it wouldn’t be exactly the same for me because I’m older now.”

Although the band has traded pizza parlours for high profile gigs like this year’s Coachella, their short, chaotic sets have stayed the same. Abegg tells me about the time Be Your Own Pet managed to squeeze a sold-out audience in Glasgow onto the stage with them to finish their set, despite all of the instruments getting unplugged. And their famous show at Reading where Abegg puked on a shirt and threw it out to the pasty punters, only too glad to grab a scrap of the bile-encrusted garment.

“I just thought it would be funny to throw it out and see if somebody would actually try and grab it. It was kind of gross too because I was drinking Red Bull all day—I swear, I will never drink that stuff again.”

With Black Lips and CPC Gangbangs at Main Hall on Tuesday, Sept. 26, 9 p.m., $13

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