On Cage The Elephant’s latest, Social Cues, frontman Matt Shultz navigates his own personal battlefield and comes through on the other side, recharged and ready for the sextet’s celebratory summer run with Beck.
It's easy to pinpoint a breakup album. From Joni Mitchell's Blue to Tom Petty's Wildflowers, the theme is all too familiar: Love is rife with fleetingmoments of bliss, rooted in a foundation of mutualtrust and understanding, but peppered with stretchesof uncertainty, confusion, jealousy and pain. Whenit works, it’s a beautiful and unbreakable jewel but,when the bottom falls out, you can’t wade throughthe wreckage without confronting your demons. Noredemption without brutal honesty, right?
Matt Shultz poured all this and a lot more into his songwritingfor Cage The Elephant’s Social Cues, most of which happenedduring the dissolution of his marriage to actress/model/directorJuliette Buchs—yet calling it a breakup album doesn’t really do itjustice. For sure, some songs fit the profile; on the hypnotic lament“What I’m Becoming,” he tempers his normally throaty tenor toturn soulful crooner, wrapping his voice in a veil of apology andregret. And on “Goodbye,” the album’s wistful, string-soakedcloser, he lingers bravely over the line “My pretty bird, my favoritelullaby, how’d I become the thorn in your side?” It’s charged withresignation and vulnerability, as though he’s lying down on thestudio floor while singing it (which he did).
“Matt was going through a lot of really heavy things duringthe writing of this record,” confides his older brother Brad,Cage’s founding guitarist. “He suffered through a fair amountof depression, as anyone would when they’re going through themeltdown of a seven-year relationship. But he’s on the other sideof it now, so that’s the good thing.”
The album’s leadoff single, “Ready to Let Go,” a moody riot ofpathos and surrender, tells most of the story. With the ruins ofPompeii as the backdrop, the younger Shultz relives the momentwhen both he and his wife knew their relationship was over (“Onholy ground, our vows were broken”), which, in essence, is hisfirst step toward getting past it. And while the gritty, stripped-down, oddly buoyant music reflects that transformation—withkeyboardist Matthan Minster, bassist Daniel Tichenor anddrummer Jared Champion laying into a thick, loungey groovewhile lead guitar-slinger Nick Bockrath hovers tastefully over thetop—what’s even more compelling is how relaxed and nonchalantMatt sounds in his vocal performance. This is where the breakupends, and the healing has clearly begun.
Of course, Matt had his own peculiar way of working it out. The video for “Ready to Let Go,” which he directed, plays like a blood-flecked Italian giallo film, as seen through the surreal lens of Alejandro Jodorowsky. As it turns out, Matt drew some inspiration from true-crime documentaries and horror flicks, and created a character for the song that he refers to as “a soft- spoken, shy-eyed murderer,” with the underlying notion to craft a narrative voice that was relatable, even personable, yet deadly. “I was really leaning into the symbolism,” he explains. In fact, “leaning in” is putting it mildly; the clip opens in a candle-lit grotto with Matt in character, stripped to the waist, his forearms drenched in red, as he sings to a similarly clad congregation seated in pews. The scene is striking, to say the least, but it’s also guided in part by Matt’s interest in iconoclastic art films by directors like Jodorowsky, Rainer Werner Fassbinder and more.
“I had just watched a film called The Color of Pomegranates [by director Sergei Parajanov],” he says, “which has this world ofrich imagery. It was right around Christmas time too, so I just keptseeing nativity scenes, and that played out in these weird littlevignettes. Blood is a pretty universal symbol. You think of thingslike guilt and redemption and love and passion and hate. It’s allthere, so that came naturally. And then there’s the couple [in thevideo] that’s feasting on their love. To me, that’s a symbol of fallingin love more with the idea of loving a person, and you feast on thatuntil you cannibalize the relationship.”
If that seems light years removed from the Shultz brothers’humble roots in Bowling Green, Ky., then it’s only because they’veseen and done so much in the interim. (Indeed, their “fast andlouche” rise recalls none other than the young Rolling Stones, whomorphed from working-class suburbanites to fashion-forward,art-rock shamans seemingly in the blink of an eye.) Back in 2007,nurtured by a vibrant and supportive music scene, Cage TheElephant went from packing Tidball’s, a small downtown clubjust a holler from Western Kentucky University, to signing withRelentless Records, joining a Canadian tour with Queens of theStone Age and moving to London—all in a span of about six months.Since then, they’ve released five albums, each more progressiveand inventive than the last, culminating in a Grammy win (in theBest Rock Album category) for 2015’s Tell Me I’m Pretty.
Along the way, they’ve also nurtured a passionately dedicatedfanbase on par with their jamband and punk-rock counterparts,making them a natural fit for the festival circuit. At Bonnaroo—anevent Matt even attended as a fan—they’ve grown into somethingof an unofficial house band, playing regularly, collaborating withtheir friends and making a surprise appearance at a campgroundarea curated by the band’s frontman.
Matt stresses the band’s openness to constant experimentation as the key to their creative growth. “We’ve all worked in this long enough that we’ve got a fairly developed process across the board, whether some of us put it into words, or just go instinctually based on experience,” he says. “For me, I feel like you have the obsessive hand and the decisive hand, so you go into it giving yourself lots of space for improvisational thought. And once that provokes something that’s honest and real, you start to make decisions based on that. Then, you can go back and disagree with yourself. That’s what’s so amazing about the editing process. You’re like, ‘Yeah,I still agree with this,’ or ‘That’s bullshit. That wasn’t real. I wasbeing insincere there.’ I always try to stay in that space.”
In teaming up with LA-based producer John Hill, whose lush, hip-hop-flavored style has fueled hits by Jay-Z, Shakira, Kings of Leon, Portugal. The Man and many more, the members of Cage went for an edit-intensive approach—almost a complete 180 from how they tracked Tell Me I’m Pretty. On that record, producer Dan Auerbach relied on the tried-and-true method that’s been such a vivid and raw hallmark of his albums with The Black Keys; he encouraged the band to record live together, from the floor, often sticking with their first or second takes.
“We’ve generally cut most of our records that way,” Brad notes,“but this one was a little more introspective. We’re always tryingto find a way to make ourselves slightly uncomfortable, so we’reforced to grow. This time, we really wanted to take a minimalisticapproach to things, to take all the little things that are happeningwithin the song and create a bigger picture. We had to be moreintentional than we’ve ever been, with every part. So we might dothe drums for two days straight. Maybe we’d do three songs thatway, and then come and do the bass for the next three days, andthen layer some guitars on there. By then, a two-week period hadpassed, and then we’d take five weeks off and live with the tracks.”
The members of Cage also felt a sense of newfound comfort as aunit: Social Cues is Bockrath’s second album since officially joiningthe band. (He started playing with Cage on tour in 2013, eventuallyreplacing Lincoln Parish, who left to follow his own path as aproducer.) “We worked at four different studios,” he says, citingBattle Tapes Recording in Nashville as home base for trackingdemos. “Jeremy Ferguson from Battle Tapes engineered the recordwith us, and he’s just a badass. We’d demo at his place, and thenwe’d get with John.” Sessions with Hill would usually take placeat The Village in LA, or at Sound Emporium and Blackbird Studiosin Nashville.
“Sometimes we’d have multiple rooms going, especially towardthe end,” Bockrath recalls. “Matt might be finishing lyrics withMatthan in one room, and me, Brad and Tich would be in the otherroom cutting strings over a song. And then we couldn’t wait to runour ideas by each other, like, ‘Dude, you gotta check this out!’ Wereally put everything we could into it, and the process with Johnwas great.”
Bockrath feels a “wide emotional palette” coming from thesongs on Social Cues, reflected in tense rockers like the title track,which stirs up spiky strains of Scary Monsters-era Bowie, or theopening cut, “Broken Boy,” a lively banger that’s fine-tuned toperfection for Matt’s hyped-up vocal. (“I was burned by the coldkiss of a vampire/ I was promised the keys to an empire.”) It’s asong that Iggy Pop could have easily made into a hit if he’d had hishands on it back in 1979.
“We were definitely inspired by the late-‘70s, early-‘80s period,”Brad warily reveals, “but not by any particular artists. We alsowanted the songs to carry a hip-hop swagger, but I guess if I reallystart thinking about that era, I’m sure Gang of Four was probablya bigger influence, as a guitar player. For me, Andy Gill was alwaysvery angular [on guitar]. He’s not exactly playing where you’dexpect him to play, and sometimes where you’d expect him to play,he’s laying out. I’ve always really admired that.”
And then there are the strings. For all the emotion andvulnerability that Matt brings to a ballad like “Love’s the OnlyWay,” his focus and intensity are magnified by composer DavidCampbell’s beautiful arrangements. A true session legend whosecredits extend over dozens of albums (from Adele’s 21 back toCarole King’s classic Tapestry), Campbell has developed anuncanny instinct for knowing how to enhance a great song withthe subtlest of melodies. Light, airy and devastatingly expressive,the violins and violas on “Love’s the Only Way” seem to wrapthemselves around Matt’s voice—an effect that isn’t just a mixingtrick, but a testament to a veteran’s ear.
“That song was coming together right around the time whenthings really started to unravel for me,” Matt says. “I was in thatstereotypical mode of running away from things, living in hotelsfor about a year, bouncing around mostly between New York andLA. Then I had an episode ofextreme exposure. I was in thisplace of isolation, and that’s whenthat song came out. That’s whythere’s a lyric about ‘my fancyhotel suite.’ I was actually livingin one! I love what David did withthe string arrangement.”
Ironically, Campbell wasalready on a short list of potentialcollaborators when the banddecided to reach out to his sonBeck—yet another story thatspeaks to the wide-ranging scopeof Social Cues. When they wereready to take a stab at thebrooding, dancehall reggae-flavored “Night Running,” Matthit a brick wall with the versesas he tried to find a path intothe song.
“Matt had actually gone outto LA to write with Natalie[Bergman] from Wild Belle,” Bradexplains, “because that song hasthat dub feel. She actually helpedwrite the melody on the end ofthe verse.”
Matt was still feeling stuck, so Brad started brainstorming with their manager. “I’m getting antsy, so I’m like, ‘What if we just sent the song to Beck? I met him a few months ago,’” Brad continues. “It was on a whim, so she sent the track to his manager, and within maybe 24 hours, he sent two verses over and told us he had four more that were stylistically different. And I think he was touring in Asia at the time! We were so stoked; we never even asked him to hear the rest. We were like, ‘These are perfect. We love ‘em!’”
With "Night Running" earmarked as a single, it only made sense to adopt it as the name of a co- headlining tour with Beck, which kicks off this summer with Spoon in the support slot and will bring them to 30 open-air venues, including New York’s famed Forest Hills Stadium. “That tour is just gonna be amazing,” says Bockrath, barely able to contain his excitement. “We’re getting the new show together, and I know Matt has something heavy planned. Not to be cheesy, but I’m in awe of him at every show. He just gives it, and it comes from a very sincere place. He’s been saying lately that he’s going to take this next cycle to a whole new level, and I’m like, ‘Brother, I cannot wait to see what you mean by that!’”
Bockrath’s own talents as a restless and inquisitive player are sure to add to the mix. To some extent, he can draw on past experiences with his former band, Disco Biscuits associates Nicos Gun, as well as gigs he’s taken on with Dan Auerbach, American Babies, Rayland Baxter and Dr. Dog’s Eric Slick. But with Nashville as home base, he and the other members of Cage are surrounded by a wealth of stellar talent, giving them an instant window into new sounds they can explore.
“I feel like one thing always informs another,”Bockrath says. “All those years of having myown band and developing a style set me up tobe the right guy for Cage. We’re all listening tototally different music—and the same music too.Every time I get to play shows with Dan, I’mdefinitely learning and picking things up just asmuch as I would playing my own songs with myown band. I really feed off it. I mean, last yearat Jazz Fest, after we played, I got to jam withMike Dillon at the Wolf Den until 5 a.m., andI sat in with JRAD [a project that features anold bandmate, American Babies frontman TomHamilton]. I’m always trying to play and stayinspired, and trying to learn something newevery day.”
For Matt, the tenacity he’s found within himself is paying dividends. It certainly wasn’t easy but, for all the pain he’s processed, there’s a distinct brightness to the mood on Social Cues that’s unmistakable. Quite simply, it’s edgy, angular, rambunctious rock at its finest. “I’m glad that comes across,” he says, “because that was a big part of it for me, and something that I keep revisiting. It’s a shame to have to say, ‘Without getting too cheesy about it’ but, to be honest, it’s really just like going through different stages of mourning. And one of those stages is hope. It’s joy, you know? So yeah, I’m pumped. I cannot wait to get out there.”
This article originally appears in the June 2019 issue of Relix. For more features, interviews, album reviews and more, subscribe here.
