Cage the Elephant

Bowling Green, Kentucky is a small town in the American South. It’s currently best known for manufacturing Chevrolet Corvettes and Fruit of the Loom underwear, but a brighter future lies just around the corner. Soon, the name of this no-horse municipality will be synonymous with thunderously sexy rock ‘n’ roll, in the rampant guise of local heroes Cage The Elephant.

What makes these five blue-collar renegades the next great American rock band? Well, in an age of Ivy League college-boys singing clever pop songs about punctuation and architecture, sometimes you want to hear something with a bit more bottom-end. And Cage The Elephant - as befits a band whose name finds room for the world’s largest land mammal - have a bottom-end you could hide a bus behind.

Their debut album combines Herculean riffs and grooves big enough to fill a canyon with juggernaut rock ‘n’ roll anthems to devastating effect. Led by brothers Matt and Brad Shultz, Cage are a mercurial mix of Southern charm wrapped around a tightly coiled spring of chaotic energy. Growing up at a time when the only option America offers young men of their social background is the chance to fight a war no-one understands or get a dead end job, Cage the Elephant are the mouth piece for disillusioned, working class America in 2008.

The record blasts off with the stadium-sized punch of debut single ‘In One Ear’ (currently all over daytime Radio 1 as Edith Bowman’s record of the week). ‘Ain’t No Rest For The Wicked’ is the irresistible, follow-up (an 18-rated morality-tale boasting some of the most seductive syncopations and slide guitar licks since Beck’s ‘Loser’).
Other highlights include the snarling, Stooges-esque ‘Tiny Little Robots’, whilst Matt demonstrates the depth of song writing on the record with the yearning, helpless from afar anthem ‘Lotus’ (“got opinions but they don’t mean shit / keep dropping bombs ‘til the whole world’s dead”) .
‘Cage The Elephant’ is laid upon the granite foundations of the band’s watertight rhythm section and 18 years old lead guitarist, Lincoln Parrish’s twisted licks and riffs. This is the backdrop for lead singer Matt Schultz to lay clam to being the most exciting new front man America has produced for a generation – an Axl meets Iggy saviour for these uncertain times.
Matt, Brad and Daniel grew up on an alternative religious commune. “Our parents were kind of Jesus-freaks”, recalls Brad. “At first they were like a bunch of hippies, and then they found God when they were on Acid, and became really hardcore Christians”. This conversion had a drastic impact on the Schultz boys’ musical upbringing. “If my Dad was feeling saucy he might put Pink Floyd on”.
Like other holy-rollers before them, Cage The Elephant signed their pact with the devil and haven’t looked back. These trailblazing hell raisers have clocked up over 50 convictions between them in their home town Bowling Green. Incendiary live shows and tours with Queens of the Stone, Foals, Lollapalooza and SXSW have followed.

The cage is open, and the beast is awake.