Be Your Own Pet

Photograph: Michael Lavine

Fillmore New York at Irving Plaza; Wed, May 28

On “Becky,” the best selection from Be Your Own Pet’s sophomore album, Get Awkward (Ecstatic Peace/Universal), the Nashville band dispenses with its fast-and-furious punk blueprint in favor of sludgy pop. Channeling her inner Shangri-La, Jemina Pearl sings of a friendship gone south. “Me and her will kick your ass!” she yelps. “We’ll wait with knives after class!” Alas, the song’s campiness was apparently imperceptible to the quartet’s label sovereigns, who excised “Becky,” along with two other tracks, from the album’s U.S. release. (If a rash of school violence breaks out in Europe, you know whom to blame.) Even stripped of its bloodier songs, Get Awkward captures the sloppy, lively spunk that the band brings to the stage. The musicians are very young and able to straddle rock worlds: Tonight they play a show for the chic Nylon magazine; in the summer, they return with the younger, suburban Warped Tour.