Introducing: The Meat Joys
If you live in Washington DC, chances are you have heard of the Meat Joys. This female-fronted art-punk rock band has been thrilling audiences around the DC/NYC area, since 1996. During 2001, they signed to NYC based record label All Night Riot, and released their sophomore album, "Between the Devil and the Deep," with production help from grunge-elite producer, Steve Albini. Since it's release, the Meat Joys have been deemed as a well worthy rock 'n' roll meets punk rock explosion. Faze 3, who has reviewed a handful of Meat Joys' shows, pegged the band "musically as a early '80s style girl punk band (early Go-Go's, X, Pat Benatar), though lyrically they are more like Grrl bands like 7 Year Bitch and The Lunachicks." Fronted by both the charsmatic bassist Heather Jensen, who shares vocals with fellow bassist Stacey Mataresse (also a member of Squatweiler), but has been known on occassion to step up as lead vocalists, if Stacey falls ill. Other members include guitarist, Rob Moore, and the self professed "oldtimer," of the group, drummer, Todd Osborn.
In a recent interview, Heather explained the music of the Meat Joys, "The idea was to reflect that personal tension without being melodramatic. We're all coming at this from different forms. Stacey and Rob are visual artists, Todd has a side improvisational art-noiseproject, and I do the third wave feminist writing thing... so when we come together we bring not necessarily those disciplines, but definitely our own vocabularies. Of course, we're not U2 or anything. We have a lot of fun with it, too. Sometimes you just wanna rock." And rock they do! Right now the band is in the midst of writing new songs for an upcoming album, hopefully to be released next year, and are playing the occassional local show.
You can check out the Meat Joys @ their website, http://www.themeatjoy.com , where you can also purchase "Between the Devil and the Deep," or their self titled debut album, not to mention a couple of various splits. Such albums are also available @ http://www.cdbaby.com