THE EDITED PRESS RELEASE: “Nashville’s Be Your Own Pet have made a triumphant return after nearly 15 years apart. Following a whirlwind two-year career in the late 00’s that saw the four teens release two records, become magazine cover stars and play to ravenous sold-out crowds around the world, it became clear that the flame burned too quickly and they needed to call it quits. Now, the reunited band make it equally clear they haven’t skipped a beat with their long-awaited new album.
Mommy was written and recorded by the three founding members Jemina Pearl Abegg (vocals), Jonas Stein (guitar), Nathan Vasquez (bass) and longtime drummer John Eatherly. “For better or worse, we all were slapped in the face that it wasn’t as easy on our own,” Stein says of their hiatus. “We were all moderately successful, but nobody found that Be Your Own Pet chemistry.”
The bond returned the very first day the band stepped back into rehearsal, which is also when they began writing the new album. And while Pearl had previously fitted lyrics into the others’ songs, this time she brought her own song ideas into the writing room. “Mommy is the bitch in charge, the one in control,” Pearl says. “It’s a reclamation of myself.” Bolstering the group’s patented garage punk ferocity with matured songwriting, inspired musicianship, and a fervor to claim their space and define their future, Mommy signals a much-anticipated reunion of an iconic ’90s band.
Be Your Own Pet celebrated the announcement of Mommy by sharing their lead single Worship The Whip, which plays out like an explicit, leather-clad dom evolution of Whip It. “Worship The Whip is about the right-wing authoritarian personality,” explains Pearl. “Aggressive and domineering to people who don’t think like them, while at heart being a submissive to the authority figures who use and abuse them.”
