Cage The Elephant Social Cues

Considering how Cage the Elephant brought home the Best Rock Album Grammy for Tell Me I'm Pretty in 2017, it's a bit startling that its successor, Social Cues, abandons the rough-and-tumble aesthetic producer Dan Auerbach brought to the band. Auerbach helped Cage the Elephant emphasize the bash-around garage elements lurking within their music, a sensibility that is absent on Social Cues.

On Social Cues, Matt Shultz tries to make sense of a tumultuous time in his life. The Cage the Elephant frontman not only went through a divorce but also lost two of his best friends to suicide during the recording of the band's fifth full-length album. But rather than dwell on his tragic circumstances, Shultz focused on the positives that tend to get dismissed during periods of personal turmoil. “I think there’s the temptation, when you’re going through a tough time, to get stuck in the melodrama of things and be like, ‘Oh, I’m going to write a sad song and it’s just going to explain exactly where I’m at,'” Shultz said in an interview with Beats 1. “You miss out on other notes and colours of life that are so important.”

Neon Pill is the highly anticipated new album from Cage The Elephant, and group’s first new music since their album, Social Cues, which won Best Rock album at the 2019 GRAMMY Awards. Cage The Elephant consists of brothers Matt Shultz (vocals) and Brad Shultz (rhythm guitar) along with Daniel Tichenor (bass), Jared Champion (drums), Nick Bockrath (lead guitar) and Matthan Minster (guitar, keyboards, backing vocals).