Be Your Own Pet

These not-yet-legal Nashville kids sure do kick out the high-speed jams (cussin' and all). Front pet Jemina Pearl gleefully yelps about the "fuuuuuun" like a revved up Iggy Pop/ Karen O. hybrid. Includes a "Stairway to Heaven" album extra that does its best to party crash the pearly gates. Props to Thurston Moore, who can sniff out a good teenage riot from miles away, signing them up to explode on his Ecstatic Peace label.

Although their buzz came too early, this is one young band that did get better, not something being 16 guarantees--as paths go, both pretension and technique are pretty f*cking forking. But at 18 or so, all four still identify as teens, and write for them. Mouthy, destructive, confused, sexed-up but no sex object, Jemima Pearl is the pearl. Guitar man Jonas Stein, who'll turn 19 this fall, takes the hyperactive rhythm section wilding. Yeah yeah yeahs all around. (Grade - A-)