Rock band Cage the Elephant emerge from loss and hospitalization with new album ‘Neon Tablet’
NEW YORK — To say Cage the Elephant’s newest album had a turbulent start can be an understatement. The band handled the deaths of family members, the pandemic and their lead singer’s arrest and hospitalization.
“It’s no secret that I had a medical disaster,” Matt Shultz tells The Related Press from Nashville on the eve of the Friday launch of the 12-track “Neon Tablet.” “I’m absolutely recovered. It undoubtedly left a scar, nevertheless it’s one that may be walked away from.”
In January 2023, the Kentucky raised singer-songwriter was charged with felony possession of firearms after police discovered Shultz’s weapons inside his room on the Bowery Lodge in Decrease Manhattan.
Shultz says that within the aftermath he found that for the earlier three years or so he’d been having a nasty response to a set of prescribed medicines (Shultz didn’t specify which), resulting in episodes of psychosis.
“It’s stunning how evening and day the distinction is from being on no matter treatment is inflicting psychosis and being off of it,” he says. “As I acquired off the treatment, I went again to my regular self. And that was very odd as a result of it was like having your life hijacked by one other individual.”
That so-called different individual had contributed to the five-year recording of “Neon Tablet” and it was as much as Shultz — who was hospitalized for 2 months and had about six months of outpatient remedy — to untangle the music.
“I went again to the lyrics, clearly to complete the album, and it was like studying the phrases of a completely completely different individual and making an attempt to decode what they meant,” he says. “Lots of it was going again and looking for the sentiment of what I used to be making an attempt to speak.”
Shultz prevented jail time by pleading responsible to 3 weapons fees.
“I’m so blessed it wasn’t worse than it was,” he says. “And blessed that I acquired the medical consideration I wanted. I’m extremely blessed to be surrounded by my household, my spouse. Positively, God acquired me by way of it for positive. I might be lifeless a number of instances over.”
“Neon Tablet” sees the band reunited with producer John Hill, who labored on their final 2019’s Grammy-winning “Social Cues,” and affords a kaleidoscope of rock, from the strutting glam of “Ball and Chain” to the piano ballad of “Out Loud” and the ethereal alt-rock of “Float Into the Sky.” One track, “Rainbow,” is infectiously poppy, as if Cage did a Lifeless or Alive monitor.
“It was very very like a fruits of all of the Cage data mixed,” says Shultz. “John Hill undoubtedly had a higher influence on this album, for positive. Not that he didn’t have an effect on ‘Social Cues,’ however with this one, he undoubtedly was pushing us more durable to succeed in inside ourselves and to jot down one of the best materials that we probably may.”
The album would not draw back from Shultz’s experiences and the title monitor drives straight into them, with the lyrics “Double-crossed by a neon capsule/Like a loaded gun, my love, I misplaced management of the wheel.” The track has turn into the band’s eleventh No. 1 on Billboard’s Various Airplay chart.
“We undoubtedly felt like that was the title monitor as soon as every little thing got here to be,” says Shultz, whose bandmates are his guitarist brother, Brad; bassist Daniel Tichenor; drummer Jared Champion; guitarist Nick Bockrath; and keyboardist Matthan Minster.
Two songs hook up with Matt and Brad’s father, Brad Shultz Sr., together with “Out Loud,” which is predicated on the time the elder Shultz and his father had a horrible battle and their dad ran away, hitchhiking all the best way to Florida. Feeling remorseful after a 12 months, the youthful man wrote a track of apology and hitchhiked again to Kentucky to play it for his father.
Matt Shultz says he was moved by the story and “so I wrote a track in regards to the track he wrote.” That track has the strains: “Man, I actually tousled now/ Clipped these wings and I got here again house/Tried my greatest simply to hold on.”
The album’s final monitor, “Over Your Shoulder,” mourns his father’s dying in 2020. The Shultz brothers inherited milk crates with tons of of their dad’s songs on previous cassette tapes. A brand new authentic Cage track emerged, just like their dad’s fashion, with the lyrics: “Don’t look again over your shoulder/I’m not saying don’t ask/When it feels prefer it will get colder/Each season will cross.”
Matt Shultz says your entire album marks a little bit of a departure for a band who he admits typically previously wore their influences on their sleeves.
“We’d be within the studio and undoubtedly at instances making an attempt to mimic and emulate. However with this document, I feel, we have been simply actually relaxed into ourselves and reaching to make one thing that we love.”
___
Mark Kennedy is at http://twitter.com/KennedyTwits
