Words by Bridjet Mendyuk
Bowling Green, Kentucky only has a population of 61,000. It seems like a big number, but when you really look at it, it’s only about 0.007% of the population in New York City. It’s a tiny fraction of a percent. If you look up what the city is famous for, it’s hard to find an answer. So when brothers Matt and Brad Shultz of Cage The Elephant started writing their newest record, Tell Me I’m Pretty via RCA Records, they went back to their hometown to spark some memories where everyone knows everyone– especially their band.
“At some point you have to get the fuck out,” guitarist Brad Shultz said. “There wasn’t anything to do in Bowling Green; a lot of kids get into bands. As far as the younger generation and even generations above us like Government Cheese and The Everly Brothers, Bowling Green was a little oasis.”
With songs that deal with growing up, getting out, even the murder of Morgan Violi, who was kidnapped in broad daylight in Bowling Green (which is what “Sweetie Little Jean” is about), the band of brothers and lifelong friends have been through everything together. Before leaving Bowling Green behind, the main subject matter off Tell Me I’m Pretty, Shultz said growing up thinking you’re stuck somewhere can lead you to self-destructive habits like drugs.
“It was starting to become a problem,” Shultz said. “I had probably 10 or more kids from my high school die of drug related incidents. It was just one of those things where we moved back [from]London [England], went back to Bowling Green for a few months and you find yourself falling back into the same shit you were into before. It was a scary thing to think about getting lost into that black hole again.
From their first self-titled record to Tell Me I’m Pretty, the band has changed their sound almost tenfold. From the booming alternative rock hit “Ain’t No Rest for the Wicked” and “In One Ear” to “Mess Around,” it’s obvious the group has matured exponentially in the last couple of years. It’s almost like they’re two separate bands going from impulsively jittery to an early 1970s harmonic. The album holds its own in the wake of the bands of the ’60s and ’70s, but even in 2016, the record unearths modern grooves as well. Shultz said he wanted to “let the tracks speak for [themselves]” and connect back to the sounds the brothers grew up listening to in Bowling Green.
“I think we wanted to strip [down]the unnecessary parts we had [before],” Shultz said. “A lot of our previous records we had this mentality of thinking as many ideas as you possibly [could]and putting all those ideas onto tracks. In some cases that works out, but in other ways, it takes away from the song itself.”
Shultz is existential in a way, calmly disclosing intimate fragments from his past for everyone to hear on Tell Me I’m Pretty building up to moments of maturity. From weight put on his conscious stemming from “critical acclaim, commercial success or even your friends,” being in Cage The Elephant has brought on feelings of resilience and the drive to persevere. As a songwriter, Shultz wanted to “write songs from a place of honesty.”
“There’s a lot of difficult things that have happened throughout this period of time, but I think they all lead you to where you are going and makes you who you are,” Shultz explained. “Not in just life, but in music. They both mirror each other. The most difficult part was probably when we started writing [our record]Melophobia. We were really pushing for personal growth and as songwriters we had to come to some realizations to our approach.”
Total honesty has been the main driving force of the record. Nothing proves to be more honest than the group’s backtracking of little discoveries they’ve taken from their childhood. Shultz even discusses the importance of “evoking certain emotion” for each song on the record. Polished, deep and brooding, the lyrics on the record have more depth than the band’s catalog. The lyrics “and as the darkness falls, it fills up both my eyes/my life before me like a flash in the night” from “Cold Cold Cold” showcase the musicians more as poets. They’ve come a long way since Bowling Green.
“Matt wanted to be more honest with his lyrics,” Shultz explained. “He’s always written about things that have impacted him in life, but he also took on a certain persona and characters that have helped him vocalize that without being totally responsible for what he was saying. He went in with a mindset that he wanted to be totally honest rather than the characters he previously had.”
Uninterested in how popular the band are currently on social media, Shultz said it’s so easy to click a button and show your support for a band. “You can’t put your heart into that,” he said. Feeling blessed at this point in their career, he said Cage The Elephant is “all a journey.” Wise and grounded, his favorite songs “Cry Baby” and “Trouble” seem like a reflection of his old life– “trouble on my left, trouble on my right/I’ve been facing trouble almost all my life.” Tell Me I’m Pretty is honest and raw. It holds redemption for the band in their own right from their former selves. Shultz is right– at some point you do have to get the fuck out and make yourself start fresh, push forward.
“The highlight of our career right now is looking back and seeing how our band has grown since the first album to where we are now; how far we’ve come since our first record,” Shultz said. “We definitely feel blessed where we are at this point in the road, but honestly, we’re more focused on pushing ourselves forward.”
