Nashville.com Visitors Guide To Nashville, TN
Today our Bonnaroo Spotlight is on Cage The Elephant, the GRAMMY® Award winning rock band who just happens to be releasing their new single “Good Time,” off their forthcoming album Neon Pill (May 17, RCA Records). Matthew Shultz shares about the new song “‘Good Time’ was one of those rare tracks that captivated me almost instantaneously. The instrumentation hit so hard, with an energy that was so commanding, that it was almost as if I couldn’t have kept myself from writing something to it if I had wanted to. Very different from anything we had ever written before, and somehow it still felt relatively familiar in contrast to our prior works. It felt like visually the music was some strange monstrous alien creature thunderously marching and stumbling down a crowded street in the middle of a parade on a sweltering hot summer day or something weird like that. I wanted the vocals to dance around and play with that energy. To be potent and at the same time intuitive or a seemingly random mumbling. As though they were a frantically ranted broken confessional piece. To illustrate as best as possible, psychosis and the entanglement of the inner dialog that constantly circulates when in that state. At the same time, in a playful way, sarcastically proclaiming that it was all just a good time or perhaps more so allowing the sarcastic statement to remain open as more of a question itself. A party song which beneath the surface, anthemic as it may be, might not be a party song at all.” “Good Time” follows recent singles from the new album including “Out Loud” and “Neon Pill,” which scored the band their 11th #1 song on Billboard’s Alternative Chart. (listen above)
Neon Pill finds the Kentucky-bred six piece—brothers Matthew Shultz [vocals] and Brad Shultz [guitar], Daniel Tichenor [bass], Jared Champion [drums], Nick Bockrath [lead guitar], and Matthan Minster [guitar, keys, backing vocals]— forging new musical ground, while maintaining their uncompromising creativity and wildly cathartic performances. “To me, Neon Pill is the first record where we were consistently uninfluenced, and I mean that in a positive way,” observes Matthew. “Everything is undoubtedly expressed through having settled into finding our own voice. We’ve always drawn inspiration from artists we love, and at times we’ve even emulated some of them to a certain degree. With this album, having gone through so much, life had almost forced us into becoming more and more comfortable with ourselves. We weren’t reaching for much outside of the pure experience of self expression, and simultaneously not necessarily settling either. We just found a uniqueness in simply existing.”
From their humble beginnings in Bowling Green, Kentucky, Cage The Elephant have gone on to become one of the generation’s premier rock bands. They have earned dozens of Gold, Platinum, and Multiplatinum certifications, tallied over 5 billion streams, and notched eleven #1 records on Alternative Radio and 5 #1 records on Triple A Radio. Their previous two albums Tell Me I’m Pretty [2015] and Social Cues [2019] garnered consecutive Best Rock Album GRAMMY® Awards. They are maybe most celebrated for their live show. The stage is their home turf, where they are most comfortable, and their performances, ecstatic and unchained, as well as cathartic and soul bearing are what Neon Pill achieves in documenting.
Neon Pill, produced by John Hill, materialized during sessions at Sonic Ranch in El Paso, Electric Lady in New York, Sound Emporium in Nashville, Echo Mountain in North Carolina, and at Hill’s own studio in Los Angeles, and alchemized a season of tragedy and turbulence into the twelve tracks on their sixth full-length album. Nine months into the pandemic, Matthew and Brad lost their father. The band weathered the back-to-back deaths of friends, while Matthew experience depression and a mental breakdown, culminating in hospitalization. Coming out on the other side, he learned quite a bit about himself, and gained a whole lot of strength and wisdom. Neon Pill came to life in the eye of the storm.
Look for Cage The Elephant on Saturday night at the What stage on the farm!
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