Cage the Elephant - New Album ‘Social Cues’

Matt Shultz could make it through only one take. The lead singer of the Kentucky rock band Cage the Elephant was recently in the studio recording “Goodbye,” a John Lennon-inspired ballad Shultz wrote for his wife as their seven-year relationship was ending. Shultz delivered it lying on the studio floor. Afterward, he walked out and canceled the next two weeks of work.

“There were times like that,” says his brother, guitarist Brad Shultz. “We’d think he was getting back to normal, then he would melt down.” Admits Matt of those sessions, “There was a fair amount of self-medication and intense isolation.” Those erratic sessions produced Social Cues (out April 19th), which adds new depth to the band’s sound — hear “Ready to Let Go,” about a trip to Pompeii, where Matt and his wife realized they needed to divorce. “It’s hard when you love each other, but it just won’t work,” he says. “I’m glad to be past it.”

Shultz leaned into the darkness of his divorce. “I saw a depth of potential evil that I had never experienced firsthand,” he says. Watching Netflix’s I Am a Killer, he started writing from the perspective of “this character: this soft-spoken, shy-eyed murderer.”

After nearly a decade, Cage had their biggest success with 2015’s Tell Me I’m Pretty, produced by Dan Auerbach. After that, they wanted to be more ambitious. Inspired by how Brian Jones played unconventional instruments on Stones classics like “Under My Thumb,” they decided to get members on instruments they weren’t used to — guitarist Nick Bockrath traded guitar for Mellotron for the propulsive opener, “Broken Boy,” and for pedal steel on the psychedelic anthem “Black Madonna.”