Cage The Elephant - "Neon Pill"

Do NOT Feed to Real Elephants

An old favorite, Alt/Indie Rock group Cage the Elephant is back with possibly the prettiest album art of the year. We all know them best from “Ain’t No Rest For The Wicked”, the breakout hit from their 2008 debut album, which went on to be used for the intro sequence of the first Borderlands game. A few albums later, Cage the Elephant seemed like a staple in the Alt Rock sphere, but, as I mentioned in my Kings of Leon review, Alt Rock has felt like it’s on a downslope for the last decade.

And it has been fully half of that since CtE’s last release: 2019’s Social Cues.

This five year span has, seemingly, been a ride for the band, as vocalist Matt Shultz discusses in this interview with AP.

Like everybody, the band had to weather Covid. In the midst of that, bandmates and brothers Matt (vocals) and Brad (rhythm guitar) had a falling out with their father; it was ultimately resolved, but he also passed away in 2020. Brad Shultz, Sr. was also a songwriter, and closing track “Over Your Shoulder” mimics his style in pursuit of closure.

Matt Shultz also had a major issue with his medication during this time, as one of his prescriptions caused “episodes of psychosis.” This led to further complications when one of these episodes resulted in Shultz being arrested for illegal firearm possession in January 2023. Shultz pled guilty and avoided jail time, but it was this event which helped him to realize that something was wrong.

After getting off of the medication, Shultz said that the episodes caused him to effectively be a completely different person:

“It’s shocking how night and day the difference is from being on whatever medication is causing psychosis and being off of it,” he says. “As I got off the medication, I went back to my normal self. And that was very odd because it was like having your life hijacked by another person.”

This ‘other person’ had already been hard at work on the album which would become Neon Pill, which provided a challenge for how Shultz and the rest of the band needed to finish it.

“I went back to the lyrics, obviously to finish the album, and it was like reading the words of a totally different person and trying to decode what they meant,” he says. “A lot of it was going back and trying to find the sentiment of what I was trying to communicate.”

Much of this saga is encapsulated (ha!) in the album’s title track, "Neon Pill”, the chorus of which reads as:

It's a hit-and-run, oh no
Double-crossed by a neon pill
Like a loaded gun, my love
I lost control of the wheel
Double-crossed by a neon pill

After all of this, Neon Pill sounds very different from what I’ve come to expect from Cage the Elephant. “Ball and Chain” is about the closest they come to matching their typical sound, with tinges of punk. But the Psychedelic Rock elements also largely take a step forward on Neon Pill, which is, I think, thematically fitting.

As they find themselves somewhat in a new space, there is a fresh rawness to the band on Neon Pill. Some elements are still polished, but it also feels like some of their existing talent has converted back into potential — there’s room to grow here, in a different direction from before. I’m not entirely sure how I feel about that, but I’m interested to see where they go next.

Neon Pill likely won’t blow anybody away, but it also isn’t an outright disappointment.

Rating: Green