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“Rock has not seen a band this untamed for an age” The Guardian

Bowling Green, Kentucky is a small town in the American South. It’s currently best known for manufacturing Chevrolet Corvettes and Fruit of the Loom underwear, but a brighter future lies just around the corner. Soon, the name of this no-horse municipality will be synonymous with thunderously sexy rock ‘n’ roll, in the rampant guise of funked-up local heroes Cage The Elephant.

What makes these five blue-collar renegades the next great American rock band? Well, in an age of Ivy League college-boys singing clever pop songs about punctuation and architecture, sometimes you want to hear something with a bit more bottom-end. And Cage The Elephant - as befits a band whose name finds room for the world’s largest land mammal - have a bottom-end you could hide a bus behind.

Their debut single proper “Aint No Rest For The Wicked” was an 18-rated morality-tale boasting some of the most seductive syncopations since Beck’s “Loser”. It bagged the band their first ever Top40 hit with across the board radio and TV support including a Jo Whiley Record Of The Week and B-Listing at Radio 1 and an A-List at MTV Two. A sold out headlining UK tour followed which built on a scene-stealing support slot with Pigeon Detectives leaving Cage The Elephant at the point of breaking out in a big way.

The full release of live favourite “In One Ear” comes next in September following festival appearances at Reading/Leeds and Bestival. Cage will then take their incendiary live show back out on the road for a full UK tour in October.

Matt Shultz (vocals), his brother Brad (guitar) and their friends Daniel Titchenor (bass), Lincoln Parish (guitar) and Jared Champion (drums) have spent the last year tearing back and forth across Britain and America, leaving a trail of hedonistic chaos in their wake. But before their debut album (recorded in just ten days with producer Jay Joyce, and out in the UK June) makes them household names on both sides of the Atlantic, it’s time to fill in a bit of background.

Matt, Brad and Daniel grew up on an alternative religious commune. “Our parents were kind of Jesus-freaks”, recalls Brad. “At first they were like a bunch of hippies, and then they found God when they were on Acid, and became really hardcore Christians”. This conversion had a drastic impact on the Schultz boys’ musical upbringing. “If my Dad was feeling saucy he might put Pink Floyd on”, Brad continues, “But I can’t remember listening to much that wasn’t Christian until Mum and Dad got divorced”.

Mr Schultz is “a lot more chilled out now”, but back then Matt and Brad’s love affair with rock ‘n’ roll had to be a more covert operation. Concerned that his sons were being exposed to songs about suicide, he smashed up a Pearl Jam tape one afternoon. “He wouldn’t let us listen to that shit”, says Matt, “but we would sneak it home anyway, till we had this big crate of secret tapes”.

Jimi Hendrix, Green Day, The White Stripes and Kings Of Leon (the last of these formative influences being fellow beneficiaries of a shared history of holy-rolling familial dysfunction) all got fed into the blender. Daniel, Jared and Lincoln joined the gang. The band demoed, toured, and did all the stuff that bands do, and as acclaimed appearances at the Lollapalooza and Bonaroo festivals led to a tour with Queens of the Stone Age, it soon became clear that something special was building.

To find out exactly what, you’ve first got to understand why this band are called Cage The Elephant. In Indian religious philosophies, the elephant is a symbol of strength and wisdom. Growing up at a time when the only option America offers young men of their social background is the chance to fight a war no-one understands, Cage The Elephant decided to look East for positive inspiration, rather than an implacable enemy.

“Our name kind of stands for the whole of society”, Matt explains, “the people we all are by nature. Sometimes it feels like there’s a campaign to lock up all the good in the world. You turn on the news and hear ‘Today 26 people got gunned down, and one guy got his head chopped off, and here’s a picture of it’. It’s like there’s no hope. And it’s not just the government or the media who are responsible for that, it’s everywhere. But we want to show that’s not right - you can’t cage the elephant”.

Cage The Elephant won’t tell you how to live your life. But from ‘In One Ear’’s full-frontal assault on the futility of “talking shit behind people’s back” (“Whatever you do, even if you’re employee of the month at Toys R Us”, Matt grimaces, “ If you’re achieving something, they’ll try to pick you apart”), to “Ain’t No Rest For The Wicked”’s considered response to picking up hitcher who turned out to be a prostitute (“We all do things that aren’t necessarily honourable – you’ve just got to try and have a little respect for people”), their humanist party anthems will still give you something to think about, even as their stampeding melodies leave you trampled underfoot.

Like Elvis and U2 before them, this band walk a fine line between the Lord’s song and the Devil’s music, The cage is open, and the beast is awake.

* Ben Thompson

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