On Warmer Music's Favorite Songs of 2012 [30-21]

Oh another year, another set of best-of lists. This year, having contributed to both PopMatters and Spectrum Culture (as well as their respective year-end list-making) I've been exposed to more music and forced to think harder than ever before about these rankings. Ignoring for the moment that this entire exercise is, in the grand, or even medium-term, scale of things, fairly insignificant, it's been a humbling experience.

You see, the more I listen to music, learn about music and write about music, the more I realize just how functionally infinite is the pool of recorded creativity and just how little of it any one person can hope to survey to even a cursory degree. With that in mind, my caveat for this year's lists of songs, albums and concerts is even more forceful. These aren't definitive (God knows I'd seriously revise last year's list now, given half the chance), they aren't exhaustive (you know how exhausting it was just to do this one?) and their very premise is riddled with holes, exceptions and other qualifiers.

But what kind of music snob would let quibbles such as those stand between them and a good arbitrary ranking? Not I, good people, not I.

In Case You Missed It: Be Your Own Pet - Get Awkward

Friday is always a cause for celebration in my book, especially when it's a Friday that precedes what's sure to be a great Saturday (but more on that tomorrow). I was listening to JEFF The Brotherhood's Blue Album wannabe jam, "Hey Friend", trying to get in the Friday mood, when I realized that no band better epitomized the fun, caffeinated, fuck-all feeling I aim for when I leave work each Friday than Jake Orall's previous band, Be Your Own Pet.



Be Your Own Pet was a gloriously snotty four-piece formed by a group of teenagers from Nashville in 2003. Jake formed the band with his brother Jamin on drums, and semetic dreamboat Jonas Stein on the six-string, but it wasn't until they met classmate Jemina Pearl that they found their heart and soul. They were everything a punk band should be, they were underaged, overamped, noisy, spastic, juvenile, catchy as hell and occasionally insightful despite their own best efforts. They released their self-titled debut in 2006 and were no longer a band by late summer 2008 but today we're gonna look at their swan song, 2008's Get Awkward.