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Birthday cake and scorpions, glitter-glam and steel-toed boots—Family Pet isn’t some bubblegummy girl group trying to sell your 13-year-old cosmetics. They’re female empowerment incarnate. They deliver garage-punk riffs with flippant aggression, their snotty, subversive lyrics smoothed like strawberry icing over the beating heart of rock & roll. The band’s new eponymous Colleen Green-produced single and B-side “I’m a Bitch” (out June 2) make a perfect soundtrack for dismantling the patriarchy in Trump’s America.

Family Pet’s name is a (sad) joke about the American ideal of normalcy, symbolized by the domestic female. “It’s just a fantasy,” lead singer & bassist Kate Dwyer says. “This idea that giving up your own dreams in exchange for comfort, for family happiness, is worthwhile. Keeping up the status quo, trying not to be offensive, watching your tone. That’s what the fantasy woman is. She’s your family pet. Your homemaker slave.”

The song “Family Pet” bludgeons the concept home, speaking to anyone who’s ever felt trapped by expectations. “Every day I deal with shit …  Hi, I’m Mrs. Fairweather!” Dwyer sings. It’s an anthem celebrating the moment when a woman decides she’s had it. What follows is a struggle both social and spiritual, as Family Pet indulges this base instinct to fight back. “The song is about living in the world and being creative,” Dwyer says, “Except nowadays the world is made not for creativity but for giving up. It’s a constant battle. Creativity has to be fought for. I really believe that.”

This feeling of teetering between oppressive burden and wild enthusiasm, between compliance and defiance, is a big part of why Dwyer started the band in the first place. “Family Pet is a response to me being frustrated as a female musician,” she says. “It’s a labor of love for the community, but it’s also for me—something I’d want as a music lover.”

This impassioned, take-no-prisoners desire for liberation continues unabashed with B-side, “I’m a Bitch.” High-octane drums and adrenaline-pumping guitars propel the verse—”You’ve got a lot of time on your hands now / I’ve got a lot of ‘leave me alone.'” It deals with a situation where Dwyer quit a terrible job where the boss wanted her to work extra hours without pay. “After I quit, they basically hit me up to let me know, ‘You’re a bitch’ because I wouldn’t work for free,” Dwyer says. “The fact that my old job would contact me just to be shitty—who has time for that? You know what? If sticking up for myself makes me a bitch, then so be it. I am a bitch.”

Family Pet comes from the ashes of Dwyer’s previous bands Sadwich and Feeling Feelings. Both used overly cutesy elements Dwyer felt no longer suited her temperament. She was simply too pissed off. So Family Pet was built on frustration and aggression. Dwyer promptly recruited her sister Maggie on guitar, and they put all their efforts into this blood-bonded punk-rock sister act, à la Kim & Kelley Deal of The Breeders in the late ‘80s. Once rounded out by guitarist Natalie XXXX and drummer Katie XXX (drums) (who played with Dwyer in her previous projects), Family Pet went to work crafting their rambunctious, aggressive and unapologetically feminist sound. 

Music has been a weapon of empowerment for Dwyer—a way to express her frustrations and overcame adversity; a machete for carving through the jungle of L.A.’s unforgiving music scene. Family Pet is now running a gauntlet once traversed by pioneering all-female Los Angeles legends like The Runaways and L7 while joining the ranks of contemporaries like Colleen Green, Cherry Glazerr and Bleached. In the band’s short life they’ve already shared stages with Honus Honus (Man Man), The Memories, comedian/writer Dan Harmon (Community, Rick and Morty, Harmon Quest) and the rest of the Harmontown cast. Family Pet’s debut LP, Petty, is slated for a July 2017 release.

To set up an interview with Acid Tongue, or get your hands on press passes, advance music, hi-res photos, album art or videos, contact Baby Robot publicist Rachel Hurley.

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Bern Kelly – Lost Films (out June 23)

If there’s one constant rule in Nashville, where musical trends come and go each year, it’s that there’s nothing more important than the song. That’s the guiding principle of Bern Kelly’s new album, Lost Films, a record that deploys a sweeping array of styles, from power-pop to plaintive folk & reverb-washed Americana, all in service of that eternal truism: The song comes first.

Recorded with an array of the town’s brightest studio pros, including producer Patrick Damphier (The Arcs, Tim Easton, The Mynabirds), steel guitar legend Russ Pahl (Dan Auerbach, Patty Griffin, Miranda Lambert), drummer Jon Radford (Steelism, Lily Hiatt, Leigh Nash) and bassist Travis Vance, Kelly’s latest record is a community-minded effort, the result of his decade-long tenure as a singer/songwriter in Nashville.

Kelly’s influences come through loud and clear on Lost Films’ ten songs, from the gruff Josh Ritter & Bruce Springsteen-channeling album opener “Unsold” to his gorgeous country-folk duet with Thirty Tigers artist Elise Davis on “Garage Sale,” a tune that recalls Ryan Adams’ Whiskeytown-era duets with Caitlin Cary. It’s an eclectic album, shifting from swooping Marshall Crenshaw guitar hooks to Mark Kozelek-inspired gothic-noir sketches. Elsewhere, Kelly draws from Jeff Buckley and Elliott Smith—in particular, the dreamy, introspective ballad “Forever Alone”—and he stretches out on the exploratory “Madeline Street,” a meandering, seven-minute epic that Kelly considers one of the proudest moments of his recording career.

“That was really a songwriting exercise for myself,” he says. “The original verses were five times longer. I’d done some co-writing in the past, but on this record, I handled everything myself. I wanted to have complete freedom to take the narrative wherever I wanted it to go.”

Lost Films (out June 23), was written over the course of three long years during which Kelly mined his own life experiences and honed in on a distinct, dense narrative style. This refined sense of craftsmanship can be heard plainly, whether in the huge pop hooks of upbeat rockers like “Win Your Heart,” “Cash in the Basement” and “Julie” or in the devastating lyrical detail of ballads “Last Day of Spring” and “She Keeps Her Light on.”

Kelly found himself with a treasure trove of material to choose from on his new full-length. “After years of writing, I had all these songs from different periods in my life,” he says. “I went through them all and picked out the ones with themes that best represent where i’m coming from as an artist and a writer.”

Bern Kelly grew up in the coal country of Northeastern Pennsylvania, an upbringing that helped shape the stories he tells in Lost Films, a collection with narratives often centered around the simple, daily routine of coming to and from work. “I didn’t have to do any research to come up with that kind of imagery,” Kelly says. “Some of the songs deal directly with the real-life struggles of working people, and to a degree that work can define a person, but it’s about more than that—it’s about trying to find something meaningful for yourself outside of whatever you do to pay the bills.” 

After going to school in Pennsylvania, Kelly moved to New York in 2006 before settling in Nashville in 2008, drawn to the city’s supportive community of like-minded songwriters. “In New York, when you’re in a band, there’s a competitive vibe of trying to outdo everybody,” Kelly says. “Coming down to Nashville, I learned real fast that everybody here just helps each other out. We play on each other’s records, lend each other guitars, tour in our different bands, and no one thinks twice about it.”

That easy sense of communal companionship is palpable on Lost Films, which features a close-knit group of colleagues, friends and neighbors, and was fittingly helmed by Kelly’s old buddy Patrick Damphier. “He’s a great communicator and knows how to push you outside your comfort zone,” Kelly says, praising his collaborator. “Patrick really creates a sonic landscape with his production. He always knows how to elevate the track to a place where the scenery and the characters really come to life.”

Kelly has been self-releasing records for years on his own label, but this new album is the most concise summation of his life’s work as a singer, guitarist, and songwriter to date. From one track to the next, he draws on his own life for the cinematic mini-narratives that fuel these new tracks. With Kelly quietly polishing his craft for more than a decade now, Lost Films is the sound of a songwriter coming into his own as an expert storyteller.

To set up an interview with Acid Tongue, or get your hands on press passes, advance music, hi-res photos, album art or videos, contact Baby Robot publicist Steve Labate.