This evening I am at home and it isn’t even 10 in the evening and I’m slowly sipping wine out of a coffee mug and going through the week’s neglected emails (It’s amazing how a job in an office will add years to your demeanor.  I’m not even a quarter of a century year old and I drink everything out of a mug and I have to actually watch what I eat.  Damn.) And here I see a little something sent from crunkbox.com guru Nick Rios about a little project I’m supposed to be working on.  About this time I remember that, oh yeah, I said I would write for this site.

I log in, probably for the first time in two weeks, and the first artist I see on the front page is called SAVAGEKAT and for the life of me I can not see why they would put it all in caps lock. So I listen, both here on Crunkbox and on their myspace page and I am not driven away quite as quickly as most myspace artists manage to do.

So tonight I write about SavageKat.

What is SavageKat like?    I would say they sound like a mix between my favored local bands Vitamins and Ready Three Coffins and Achille Laro.  And then it also sounds like other stuff.  But you, the reader, would have no idea what I was referring to.  So, I’ll do this route:  SavageKat is like Jack Johnson without the suck.  SavageKat is what would happen if 311 finally grew up, got a hell of a lot smarter, played acoustic all of the time and even dabbled in country music.  It’s like that.

This is why I love independent music, because in the process of relating the unknown to the known I manage to make mainstream music look like crap.  Which is totally OK.

SavageKat is who you would want playing on the  patio at your Grandfather’s 80’th birthday backyard bar-be-que.  And everyone, even Aunt Cynthia - who doesn’t like anything unless it has a drive thru - would love it.

SavageKat’s two records, Acoustic Debauchery Volumes 1 and 2 are just that – a debauchery of one’s auditory senses. Even when singing about heartbreak (at least, I think that’s what the song is about) the acoustic rhythms make me want to light a tiki torch just so the ambiance would match the music.  A tiki torch.  In February.  In Denver.  It’s that good.

While I can’t put my finger on it, I feel that my appreciation of this music is justified.  I made comparisons between SavageKat and pop musicians earlier.   In an earlier review I berated “indie” disgraces – The Sessions – for being just like the Killers.  Being the same as a pop group and failing to make money at it does not make one independent.  Just listening to SavageKat one can tell that this band just enjoys making music. They play a circuit of clubs, they don’t try to glam anything up or try to have a little kitsch that they rely on to set themselves apart.

These Kats, they’re just different. 

But what do I know? Just listen, will ya?