UK Ska band The Meow Meows have launched a PledgeMusic campaign to release their third album. They plan on releasing the new album in the Summer but need help from the ska community and their fans to do it. 10% of the money raised after the goal is reached will go to Shelter charity. So check out the pledge page and see what you can get if you lend your support to the band.

The band posted this on their Pledge page:

This summer we released our single “Friends on Benefits”. Now we’re hoping to “benefit” from our friends’ (that means your) generosity. Nah, that doesn’t work on any level, not even grammatically. It’s harder than you’d imagine to come up with a hook for one of these campaigns.

OK. I guess if you’re still reading this you’re already open to our sales pitch, so here goes. We want you to give us your money so we can make our third album. You’d be buying a present for the you that will exist in a few months time. Think of it as a sensible investment in your own future, like Japanese lessons, or an eyebrow tattoo.

Three years ago we ran our first successful Pledge campaign. It changed our lives in a tiny yet profound way, and dare we say it, made us grow up a bit. We went from recording on weekends with our mates to spending a week in reggae legend Prince Fatty’s studio. While we’re never going to spend months on the road, we’ve played big festivals and ventured far beyond the comfortable confines of Brighton. We can’t quit our day jobs, but we can brighten our lunch hours with an occasional post-office trip to post CDs to people we’ve never met in Tokyo, Paris, and Caracas.

You get the picture. It was a good thing for us, and (hopefully) for you the Pledgends.

We’re determined to make a similar evolutionary step with our new album.

While every musician everywhere, ever, is forced by convention to describe their upcoming or recently-released record as “the best thing we’ve ever done”, that also happens to be true on this occasion. We have the songs 80% of the way there, and are currently finishing them off in a blaze of creativity. We’ve got our signature ska/soul/garage mashups, but we’ve also got pure Motown and slow-burning epics. The bangers bang harder, the reggae is reggaeier (that’s probably not a word), the politics politickier (definitely not a word).

The elusive producer we’ve earmarked isn’t 100% confirmed, but we are close to securing someone exactly and equally amazing as Prince Fatty. Wink-wink, nudge-nudge and fingers crossed.

The delivery date is set some time in June. (Imagine an asterisk here and a note to the effect of circumstances within our control as CD turnaround times can be ridiculous but we will do everything in our power to send you your items as close to when you’d expect them as possible and not let things drag on and on for months and months like the recent pledge from our friend the genius lyricist and despicable reprobate Chas Palmer-Williams whose CDs were delayed long past the point of being funny and then back through being funny again and then not (but to be fair to him the album was eventually excellent (as we promise ours will be too)))

Now, on to the pledges themselves. You can get a CD, a signed CD, a t-shirt…. boring! We’re drifting off just typing this. Let’s talk about the special, unique, very reasonably-priced one-of-a-kind items and experiences that you can only ever get here!

Do you like the cut of Ellis’s jib on the saxophone, or Matt’s trumpet technique? They’ll provide you with half-hour masterclasses in the hornblowing arts.

Did you enjoy the Christmas-ised version of “Friends of Benefits” in our announcement Pledge video? You can commission Alex to produce a version of any Meows tune in the incongruous genre of your choice.

Maybe you’ve marvelled at Ian’s ability to take up space? You can watch him do that from an up-close and personal perspective, at a meal he’ll probably turn up drunk to expecting you to pay for.

And there’s more. Fans of semi-autobiographical comics and hard-drinking English film actors’ penises can pledge for exclusive artwork from acclaimed cartoonist Danny Noble, who also occasionally turns up to sing with us. You can purchase a disposable camera which we’ll fill with shots of the recording process, pub sessions, and, let’s face it, probably at least one band member’s buttocks. If you want to experience our poor behaviour in full effect, you can even break the bank to get us to turn up and play at your house.

But that’s not all. Like a shit 80s cartoon attempting to disguise that it only exists to sell choking-hazard plastic robots to impressionable children by tacking on a “moral” at the end of the episode, we will donate 10% of our Pledge proceeds exceeding our target to Shelter (http://england.shelter.org.uk. Shelter helps millions of people every year struggling with bad housing or homelessness by providing advice, support and legal services so no one has to fight bad housing or homelessness on their own.

So, if you’re feeling the generous, festive mood – get involved. Let’s see if we can get the money to get the #MeowsOnTheMoon before Christmas!