Photo by Amie Santavicca / Design by Joe Frontel
Pet Lizard is (L-R, clockwise) Kirsten Clauser, Nick Winston, Austin Loper and Jamie Perez.
Guitarist Nick Winston told Creative Loafing Tampa Bay that a lot of Pet Lizard’s fanbase is made up of the community that surrounds the band in a video for its 2022 video for “Fixed Gear,” where he—together with frontman Jamie Perez, bassist Kirsten Clauser and drummer Austin Loper—pedals around Ybor City, beneath rainbows above the Hillsborough River, through parking garages, all to end up clinking PBR cans in the neon red light coming off the The Hub dive bar in downtown Tampa.
While Clauser met Loper at a 2020 protest and Perez a year before that at an ultimate frisbee tournament (the latter was a nine-year pro in the sport, and captained the Venezuelan national team at this month’s Pan American Championships), the band coalesced around bicycles and played its first show in 2021 after a local Halloween alleycat race. Winston doesn’t know how many miles he and his bandmates have ridden together, but a lot more people are about to be along for the ride.
Last week, Pet Lizard released its debut full-length Intrusive Thoughts, a tight and punchy collection of 10 songs that bring the band’s influences—which include Amyl and the Sniffers, Pup, Joyce Manor, Car Seat Headrest and even Dijon—together with angsty lyrics that spilled out of the friends as the world collectively waded out of the Covid-19 pandemic.
The record is peppered with humor about everyday life, like on album opener “Back To Black” when Perez sneaks in a line about regrettable tattoos. Every member of Pet Lizard has ink in their skin, with Perez and Loper definitively second guessing some of the work. Clauser told CL she has 10 tattoos but isn’t sorry about any of them.
“The dumbest one I have is definitely a PBR can–12 oz. when relaxed, 16 oz. when flexed,” she added.
Intrusive Thoughts is just as relatable across the album’s 30 minutes, even when the band is talking about another personal choice: getting a little help.
“Bad Hygiene” introduces the notion of dizziness, a thread that runs throughout the album. Perez lives with vasovagal syncope, which causes the heart rate and blood pressure to drop suddenly in response to certain triggers. He told CL that at times, internal and external forces have left him feeling disoriented and brought him to the point of passing out. In the song, he is generally grateful about life, but also cops to smiling at people out of habit and even lying to his therapist. And as the cut’s irresistible, staccato pre-chorus comes to a crescendo propelled by Loper’s galloping drums, Perez sings about simply trying to keep it all together while everyone seemingly gives up on him.
“I’ve found that sometimes emotional responses can generate that same overwhelming feeling. It may feel impossible to face in the moment, but just like with vasovagal response, the best thing to do is to breathe and be present until the moment passes,” he added.
On “Shadow,” Perez details a FaceTime call with his then-girlfriend during the pandemic days when everyone was home alone; the song is about wanting to comfort someone else, and not wanting to be alone. Winston, for his part, said he was listening to a lot of Julien Baker when the words for “Wanderer,” a song about self-care, came together.
All of that care blasts out of the speakers in grand fashion, too, thanks to Justin Reed, an engineer who recorded, mixed and mastered everything except piano and synth in a garage studio. The album—a proper full-length in a world dominated by singles meant to game an algorithm—is polished, loud and energetic without being overbearing or a pain in the ear. And for “Murakami,” Perez’s favorite song on the album, he lets listeners into a Zoom therapy session conducted over a terrible internet connection.
“The juxtaposition of having a breakthrough moment in therapy and communicating feelings out loud that I rarely confront, while the internet service kept cutting in and out, felt like a metaphor for the modern convenient inconveniences we both use and must overcome in our own journeys of self improvement and self love,” he said.
That kind of introspective turbulence comes to a head on album-closer and highlight “Holy Spirit,” which opens gently à la Jimmy Eat World’s “Hear You Me,” transitions into Weezer-ish guitar-vocal harmonies about the virgin Mary, and then careens into a full-on, old-school punk and pub-rock takedown on the “capitalistic Vatican state.”
Clauser said everyone in the band relates to the song in a way since they all came from religious upbringings that they eventually strayed far away from. Perez described the tune—which has caused some people to walk out of Pet Lizard’s live show—as Catholic guilt in a bottle.
“Drink up,” he added.
That’s what the band and its fan base will do on Friday during an album release party that’ll undoubtedly see multiple bikes locked up outside while Pet Lizard toasts to its debut and welcomes even more people into its inclusive, big tent (“We love you all forever. Except rotten cops, billionaires, & Ron DeSantis,” it says in the booklet for Intrusive Thoughts).
Clauser said that the community that’s coalesced around the band brings an infectious energy and opens the door to pretty much anyone who wants in on the camaraderie . “It’s a lot easier to jump around and dance when there are already 15 people doing it with huge smiles on their faces,” she added.
“Pet Lizard, to me, was formed with and around friends,” Loper said. “We want to have a good time, and not take things so seriously, and we want our fans and friends to feel that, too.”
Party on.
Tickets to Pet Lizard's album release party on Friday, Dec. 8 at Crowbar in Ybor City are still available and start at $15.
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