Jemina Pearl – Break It Up
After four years of excitable food fights and zombie parties, Be Your Own Pet and their agitated art-punk sadly dissolved last year claiming the experience to have been a ‘blast’. Since then, Pearl has been busy acquiring friends on the extended scene, and now, along with BYOP’s drummer, John Eatherley, she presents the fruits of her networking on Break It Up, her debut solo outing. It’s in with coup-like, Thurston Moore cameos and Dave Sitek guest-production, in with dulcet Iggy Pop duets (the tongue-in-cheek misanthropy of ‘I Hate People’) and in with plenty of more-of-the-same, spunky pop-punk. And it’s out with puerile fun, though only the puerile part of that statement, as the spiky garage-rock riffs of ‘Looking For Trouble’ demonstrate.
Pearl remains a firebrand, as potty-mouthed as ever (‘wave goodbye with the middle finger’ she sings on ‘Band On The Run’), and as spunkily bubblegum as ever. She comes across effortlessly as a sort of riot grrrl icon for the emo generation.
Break It Up does ultimately suffer from insubstantiality, each of its thirteen tracks similar in aim and effect and all delivered with breakneck and irrepressible angst. Nevertheless, it is difficult to dislike. File under guilty pleasure, though don’t tell her that, as she’d probably kick your ass for saying so.