One of key musical experiences of my life was listening to the soundtrack for The Crow circa seventh grade. As I've mentioned elsewhere, at that age my musical tastes were mostly dictated by other things I was interested in, and because I liked the movie I pretty much just decided I would like the album. Thankfully, though definitely a mixed bag, the music on that album is actually pretty good, the only problem was that there just wasn't enough on it for me at the time. I wanted more music like that, but I didn't have the sense or the intelligence at that point to find more of it outside of just looking up more songs by the same people.
So, what do you do? In a move of pure genius, I reasoned that if the soundtrack for the first Crow movie is good, the soundtrack for the second one is probably also good. Now, if you've actually seen how bad The Crow: City of Angels is, you'll know that there's no logical basis for that line of thought, but whatever. I downloaded the album and got to listening. While there were definitely some downgrades going from the first album to the second (Bush...), the parts that I liked about the City of Angels soundtrack I actually liked more than my favorite parts of the first Crow soundtrack. The standout tracks for me, in ascending order, were the White Zombie version of "I'm Your Boogie Man," the Toadies' "Paper Dress," the incredible live version of "I Wanna Be Your Dog," and finally, my absolute favorite, "Lil' Boots" by Pet. From the discordant guitar intro, to the sick, simple drums, to the incredible power of the vocals and the great lyrics, I thought it was far and away the best song on the album. There was just one problem - I couldn't find anything else about Pet online. I could see that they had a full album, but it wasn't available through any of my normal avenues for downloading music, and nobody had uploaded any of the other tracks onto Youtube or anything at that point. I was stuck. So, I listened to "Lil' Boots" over and over, usually paired up with Iggy, and every couple of months I'd try looking for it again to no avail.
It would be a couple of years before I finally found the album. Obviously, "Pet Pet" does not bring up a lot of relevant search results, so I think what I did was search for one of the track titles on Soulseek to find the album. By that time I was a little bit older, and had very different musical inclinations than I'd had in the seventh grade. I didn't really expect to enjoy the album - I mean, how could it live up to the impression one song left on my suggestible young mind? - but, well, I liked it a lot.
This album's whole thing, really, is the ole quiet-loud dynamic. The guitars, the drums, and especially the vocals (by the inimitable Lisa Papineau) spend most of the album swinging between the two extremes. What makes that work, besides the strength of the compositions and how intentionally they all fall within this scheme, are the power of the individual performances. Papinau's vocals are the star of the show, and it seems obvious that her voice was the impetus for the whole group. Whether she's whispering meekly or howling with desperate anger, her voice is always powerful, clear, and extremely cutting. And the lyrics here, all written by her, are the perfect pair for her vocal style. My favorite track, lyrically, is "Bed," which is at once the most despondent track but also the most furious at its self-directed anger. It's really great.
The guitars are another highlight here. In most respects they're pretty typical alternative rock fair, but always in pretty tasteful ways. The best parts are the moments of noise and atonality that break through in a lot of tracks, which serve as great compliments of a lot of the intentionally-ragged vocals. The acoustic guitar tracks, are also nice. It's not exactly groundbreaking playing, but they give Papinau's softer side a chance to shine and help underscore the power of the louder tracks. It's cool to see that the guitarist, Tyler Bates, has gone on to do a lot of soundtrack work, including for movies I'd actually seen before I ever heard "Lil' Boots."
As far as I can tell, Pet were strictly a studio project. I would have loved to hear live versions of some of these songs, much less a second album, but some things just don't work out that way. I'm not gonna tell you this album is perfect or anything, but to me it's the very definition of a hidden gem. Thankfully, it's a lot easier to find online now than when I was twelve.