INTERVIEW: Cage The Elephant

On the day of the release of their fourth studio album Tell Me I’m Pretty, we chatted to Cage The Elephant frontman Matt Shultz about writing on the road, bus break-ins and questionable Christmas presents…

Happy Tell Me I’m Pretty release day! How are you celebrating?

Thank you! We have an instore a record shop in Kentucky – there’s a guy there who’s name is matt and he used to work for a chain and then they closed down and fired him and he opened up his own store so yeah that’s basically the bulk of the day.

It’s been just over 2 years since Melophobia came out – is it exciting to be going through the release of a new album again?

It’s great – it’s kinda weird, I don’t think that I really realized that it’s out today. It’s like the Christmas seasons and you’re all excited and then it gets to it and it’s like “oh, it’s the day already”. It’s a bit confusing.

I suppose it’s nice that it’s out around Christmas though, you get double the excitement! You’ve taken a much more personal approach to writing with Tell Me I’m Pretty – you said yourselves it was “like those kids in Bowling Green, Kentucky coming to a practice space, jamming and having a good time” – was that a conscious decision or something that just happened?

 Hahah I’m a bit of a bah-humbug at Christmas. It’s a little bit of both really – it was obviously different with this album because it was less writing in the studio and a lot more on the road. We went back to more organic roots – with two new guys playing with us (Nick Bockrath and Matthan Minster) there were constantly ideas bouncing around.

One thing I’ve always admired is your ability to stick to your own sound, but never get boring – how do you continue to keep things fresh?

We’ll we’re all pretty competitive, and we all have a lot of drive with pushing ourselves. We all seem be at a place in our lives, where we’re all in our 30s trying to discover new music and trying to be cooler than the others so it always keeps it pretty fresh.

How did the decision to work with Dan Auerbach come about?

We found out that our long time producer couldn’t work with us and so we started thinking of people. Dan was one of the first we thought of: a lot was coming together on tour and we wanted a more raw sound and there aren’t a lot of producers that are bringing that sound at the level that Dan is. I didn’t 100% grasp how well he was going do it – I had doubts for sure, he did songs in one or two takes – I would want to re-record vocals and he would just say “no it’s done”. Sometimes we’d all go back into the control room and hang for a minute and he’d start spinning an obscure records (like Brazilian garage rock) and then once we all locked into something we were loving he’d make us go back and make us record. A lot of the songs came out sounding really different.

You’ve got a UK tour coming up, but can we expect any festival appearances over the summer too?

 I hope so, for sure. We want to spend a lot of time in the UK and Europe. I don’t personally deal with a lot of the booking stuff but there are plans to do a lot for sure.

What are your favourite places to play in the UK? Any weird experiences?

Bristol, London of course, Nottingham… One time we were playing a show in Leeds and our bus got broken into and this guy was stealing all the laptops. But he made the mistake of breaking into the drivers cab and our driver was in there sleeping (he’s a big guy) and we were able to get a copy of the CCTV and you can see the guy getting reaching in and being pulled into the cab with his legs just hanging out.

Since it’s super close to Christmas it’d be a shame not to as a Christmas question – what’s the worst Christmas present you’ve ever received?

My wife is French and last year her family got me two pairs of like, bikini underwear. I was just like ‘Oooh, thanks’…

Ew, that’s not good… I guess they were straight in the back of the underwear drawer then.

Haha, yeah. They were basically thongs.

Ooh dear. And finally, if you could have written any song in the world, what would it be?

‘Something’ by George Harrison.

That’s great! Thank you so much for chatting to us!

Thank you! Have a great day.

UK Tour Dates:
12 February – Bierkeller – Bristol, UK                               
13 February – Shepherd’s Bush Empire – London, UK                               
14 February – Rescue Rooms – Nottingham, UK
15 February – Riverside – Newcastle, UK
16 February – QMU – Glasgow, UK                               
18 February – Academy 2 – Liverpool, UK
19 February – Unity Works – Wakefield, UK
20 February – Academy 2 – Manchester, UK

Melissa Svensen
@MelYeaahh

 

Melissa Svensen

Melissa Svensen

Melissa, 22. Editor. Student, music journalist, probably talking about Blur or Bowie