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Family Pet

BULL TONGUE #27
Family Pet 12” A free-rock duo, these guys remind me a bit of a jazzic version of Happy Flowers, with less emphasis on vocals, and more focus on the pure evil pleasure of destructive construction. Spazzed out and personal.
—Byron Coley / Thurston Moore

TERMINAL BOREDOM Spring 2007
Family Pet s/t 7” & 12” Family Pet is from way up in Gardiner, Maine, which I would have guessed an unlikely origin for such challenging, cacophonous music—but I suppose the state that is home to Orgonon, the former home, laboratory, and research center of Wilhelm Reich, has room for this too. The 7” at hand is a single-sided platter in which the duo plays the keyboard as though they’re attacking it with a hammer, and the drums with similarly reckless abandon, creating a free-form racket. The 12”, also single-sided, is an extended mess that adds a saxophone and more prominent vocals to the mix. This song carries on at an even pace and volume so that the chaotic playing blends into a comfortable noise. Surely these folks spend their days listening to Ayler, Mars, Demo Moe, and Sun Ra—or at least their music reflects the vision of these predecessors. Family Pet is an end of the night, room-clearing kind of band—unless it’s an incredibly hip room.
—Dave Hyde

TERMINAL BOREDOM Summer 2007
Family Pet “Ideas are the Enemy” 7”
Family Pet spends just under three minutes barking out “Ideas Are the Enemy” on their third single-song, single-sided release. Whereas their previous efforts were purely chaotic, this track has the band exploring easy listening territory with its much more limited instrumental palette — a duet between Willie’s sax and A.M. Haine’s voice. I’m being facetious; though less noisy and perhaps easier to understand, “Ideas Are the Enemy” is anything but saccharine. The horn wails freely in the foreground, dipping into abrasiveness at times, while Haine is omnipresent, howling in the back. The sounds play well off of each other, and the song itself adds another dimension to Family Pet’s growing legacy. Limited to 115 copies.
—Dave Hyde

SILTBLOG (Online Blog) July 2, 2007
Three 1 sided records come courtesy of Family Pet (an LP + 2 7"ers) & it's about as zonked & lo-fi improvo la spazzathon as your likely to order by mail in the here & now. Hailin from Brunswick, Maine I can easily see this duo as bein the East Coast response to The Geeks, or at least havin ate a copy of that band's 'It's Not About Notes Anymore' lp. Lot's of LOUD keys, horns & percussion & vocalist A.M. Haines sounds like he might've jumped off the boat ramp at Sawyers Point about a hundred times too many. What's not to love?
— Roland Woodbe

APPLES AND HEROIN (Online Blog) July 4, 2007
Family Pet splatter paints violent guitar and spazz keyboard strikes across landscapes of wailing Braxton sax on their self-titled 12”. The crazed caveman-core will surely draw comparisons to “LA Blues” but that tune contained structure. The one-sided [untitled], 45 RPM album collapses the Jenga stack before the game even begins, leaving its audience to ponder scattered blocks. Chaos dominates the mindset, as the trio explores wreckage in search of a groove. Eventually, they find the groove to be the wreckage and muse on it for an entire album side. These guys beat the spine out of music and use its blood as war-paint. —S. Kobak

Z GUN issue # 1, Summer 2007
The untitled 7" is a one-sided blast of everything in the bucket free jazz produced by a duo from Maine. Like Chad Stockdale's duos (Klondike & York, Chad & Kevin), Family Pet leaps straight into a twist of noise and don't let up until they've sapped their reserves. Also like K&Y, it takes about a quarter of a song to hear the duo click, prior to that moment, the music feels like disorganized thoughts and I grow impatient. I want the keyboards and percussion to battle together not each other. When Family Pet does get into synch, the tad a frustration is well worth it, because these fuckers get a head on and really slice away at sound... The one side 12" is more of the same - high energy pound & skronk - and takes a little less time to click. It is also pretty funny. The first thing that came to mind is that this is what I'd have used for the openeing scene of 2001 is the cavemen were spastics... Best of the bunch is Ideas Are the Enemy. One side, one song, once again, Ideas... is just vocal and sax. They've either practiced this act or are Siamese twins: Their timing is uncanny. the music is loud, fast, chaotic and full of humor. Good Stuff.
— Scott Soriano