Album review: Cage The Elephant returns with inconsistent ‘Neon Pill’

Anna Pichler
Thu, 23 May 2024 00:40:21 +0000
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Cage The Elephant will perform in New York City and New Jersey while on their North American summer tour. Credit: Matt Smith via TNS

The years following Cage The Elephant’s 2019, Grammy-winning album “Social Cues” haven’t exactly been restful.?

Cage the Elephant’s sixth studio album, titled “Neon Pill” and released Friday, is colored by singer and lyricist Matt Shultz’s hardships over the last several years, encompassing his father’s death, a temporary separation from his wife and an arrest in January 2023 on charges of felony firearm possession.?

Medications also play a role in the album’s holistic narrative. In a conversation with NPR, Shultz said for several years leading up to his arrest, prescribed medications had been causing episodes of psychosis.

The band — comprised of Shultz, his brother and rhythm guitarist Brad Shultz, lead guitarist Nick Bockrath, guitarist and keyboardist Matthan Minster, bassist Daniel Tichenor and drummer Jared Champion — attained varied successes in accomplishing musical catharsis from the album’s source material.?

For any album, the opening track is undoubtedly essential to introducing listeners to a sonic story, opening up their ears and persuading them to stick around. Cage the Elephant has succeeded at this in the past; its eponymous debut album, called “In One Ear” and released in 2008, provided an unbridled rawness and punk-laced “I don’t care what you think about me” energy that is absolutely infectious.?

The opening track of the band’s 2013 album “Melophobia,” titled “Spiderhead,” is similarly enticing with its raucous, feverish chaos.

Unfortunately, this album’s opener “HiFi (True Light)” is much less addictive. Though the funk- and psychedelic-infused tune is pleasant, it lacks significantly daring or absorbing elements that would pique fans’ interest in listening to 11 successive tracks.

As the album progresses, its opener’s repetitive, flimsy chorus seems to likewise afflict subsequent tracks, leaving the audience yearning to hear the band break away from whatever rhythm they’d settled into and wondering whether Shultz sang each chorus a few too many times.?

One could make a case for the repetitiveness of the track “Metaverse,” as the blazing instrumentals aptly mirror Shultz’s sense of constantly “running and running.” Even so, the record’s deficiency of explosiveness may leave listeners feeling as “checked out” as Shultz claims to be.?

“Rainbow” is the most egregious, though: Shultz’s sappy ode to a lover who “[lifts him] up when [he gets] down” is much too stale and immature to warrant its incessant repetition, especially considering the track’s lackluster melody and redundant guitar riff.?

Achieving emotional depth is also a struggle throughout the album. The second single, called “Out Loud” and released Feb. 29, ultimately lacks the heartrending introspection it seems desperate to waft into listeners’ ears with its slow tempo, somber piano and sentimental strings. Certainly, Shultz’s lyrics are emotionally wrought, but his plain-stated admissions of having “really messed up now” and struggling to discover who he’s “tryin’ to be” are too vague to carry much weight or memorability.?

Later tracks “Silent Picture” — in which Shultz chronicles a man standing at the bottom of a staircase, gasping for breath and helpless to endure a relationship’s end — as well as “Same” — a spacier remembrance of an ex-lover, whom Shultz cleverly and bitterly remembers lending him a jacket when he asked for a coat — are much more lyrically vivid to emanate true heartache without any saccharine strings.

Even the album’s weakest tracks aren’t bad, and they’re certainly palatable to a wide audience. Even “Rainbow” and “Shy Eyes,” a similarly uninspired yet undeniably groovy track, are likely to inhabit alternative and pop-rock stations this summer.?

Still, I also imagine fans who have long been anticipating the release are hungry for more than tepid pop-rock bops. Fortunately, there are several songs on the album that cater to such listeners.

Clearly connected to Shultz’s past drug usage and subsequent arrest, the title track, which is his account of being “double-crossed by a neon pill, like a loaded gun,” is sweeping and seductive with its bewitching groove, psychedelic edge and alluring lyricism.?

“Float Into the Sky,” a delightfully heady yet pointedly vulnerable track about getting high to evade a nonsensical “present age on fire,” features an airy, hypnotic outro marked by ominously heavy synth. The outro of “Same,” a discordant and frenzied musical dilapidation, similarly offers respite from the predictable song structures plaguing much of the album.?

“Ball and Chain” is another bright spot for its groovy guitar solo and Shultz’s rap-sung delivery— à la alternative rock band Cake’s famed singer, John McRea — of paranoid lyrics about being “lost in fabrication” and having a “parasitic past life.”?

This vocal style is likewise engaging in the third single, named “Good Time” and released April 5, in which, against forceful, crunchy electric guitar riffs, Shultz is a “space head,” “creature” and “glutton” spitting and snarling about abandoning himself entirely, maybe to a doomed love affair or to his excessive rockstar lifestyle. Considering how tense and aggressive the music is, this seems to be much less of a “good time” than Shultz proclaims it to be.?

As with past opening tracks, Cage the Elephant has proven its ability to end an album memorably. Notably, “Melophobia” ends with none other than the band’s biggest hit, “Cigarette Daydreams.”?

The concluding song of “Neon Pill,” “Over Your Shoulder,” isn’t quite as arresting — to be fair, such a song would be a lot to ask for — as its emotional gravity is dampened by overly produced vocals.?

Still, it resolves “Neon Pill” quite nicely. Shultz’s chorus statement that “when it feels like it gets colder, every season will pass” is a bit cliché, but it’s sincere, and the context of his recent troubles lends his words a mantra-like quality and poignancy.?

“Neon Pill” offers both casual audiences and longtime fans grooves worth revisiting, but as a whole, it will likely leave listeners in the latter category “[looking] back over” the band’s more consistently captivating, envelope-pushing earlier works.?

It’s hardly a bitter pill to swallow, but that can be a weakness. If anything, this neon pill goes down too easily.?

Rating: 3/5