Brooklyn-based power trio Meowskers delivers hungry, ecstatic rock, touched with a heavenly glow. On their debut release, Fake Orange EP, the band combines the jagged darkness of early Black Sabbath with the holy drive of U2, smoothing it out with the sexy swagger of 80's synth pop.
The three met in December of 2005 when their separate bands were thrown together for a modest package tour down the East Coast. By the end of the run, after sizing each other up carefully for a few nights in a row, the band Meowskers was born. This is how Matthew Rudnicki (who had been slinging his unique brand of humble bravado on vocals and keys for several years in Boston) combined forces with the explosive and brooding rhythm section of bassist Mike Cheever and drummer Jeff Neuberger, childhood friends from Chicago who had been playing together for nearly a decade. The union was as magnetic as it was effortless, and by the end of the year a singular musical direction had been forged - one that reeked equally of sincerity and inevitability.
The trio soon moved together to Brooklyn, landing in the overflowing basin of creativity that is Williamsburg and, along with the two close friends that had brought them all together, found a place around the corner from the legendary venue, Pete's Candy Store. They struck up a relationship with the regulars and the staff at Pete's and before long they found it to be their home-100-feet-from-home. Eventually forming the core of the Official Pete's Candy Dodgeball Team, Meowskers even made it to the championship round in the 1st Annual Jelly NYC McCarren Pool Summer Dodgeball Tournament, bringing home much glory and honor to their classy and undaunted sponsors.
The timing seemed right, so the band soon made its soft debut on Pete's tiny, hallowed stage. The late summer showcase was an enormous success and the owner of Pete’s immediately offered the band a Friday night headline residency. And so, for four weeks straight in November, the guys packed the cozy joint to it's absolute sweaty limit night after night, show after show - first exploding on stage to ecstatic crowds that snaked out of the room and down the hall, to then afterwards throwing a series of now infamous after-parties around the corner at the The Compound, where they lived, wrote, and rehearsed.
Around this time the trio also entered Marcata Studio in New Paltz to begin recording their first material with Kevin McMahon (The Walkmen, French Kicks, The Big Sleep). Basics were laid in a beautiful barn with no heat or shower, and several sub-zero days later (after playing their instruments through fingerless gloves and wearing hats and scarves), the band emerged with the roughs that would comprise the bulk of their debut release. After some more tracking back at The Compound and an early spring trip up to Boston to lay down vocals with Matthew Ellard (Elliot Smith, Morphine, Billy Bragg & Wilco), Meowskers had enough to cut an EP.
Finally, with great pride and surreal hope, they carefully assembled the recordings over several stages in multiple cities, with various industry talents. Four finished tracks emerged; the sounds of their beginnings. The songs they became a band over. And the pool of their collective vision, time, blood, and money.
Every successful movement on Earth finds itself at some point coming upon a critical juncture, a transition from thought to action; from hobby to career. The drunken backroom ramblings of a pissed-off farmer outside Kiev. The starry-eyed apirations of a planet-locked species as they discover plastics. Hippies had Woodstock. Matter met Gravity.
Meowskers eventually released 'Fake Orange EP'. Finally, something that could be held in one's HANDS. A hat to throw into the ring. And the point where the fun really begins...
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