Cage the Elephant, Young the Giant, Bakar

media release: Cage The Elephant, the GRAMMY® Award winning rock band, mark their return and announce both the release of their forthcoming sixth studio album, Neon Pill (May 17, RCA Records) and their 45-date North American summer tour. 

Cage The Elephant’s 45-date North American US tour, produced by Live Nation, includes a stop at Breese Stevens Field in Madison, on August 8, 2024. Young The Giant & Bakar will join as special guests. 

The new album finds the Kentucky-bred six piece—brothers Matthew Shultz [vocals] and Brad Shultz [guitar], Daniel Tichenor [bass], Jared Champion [drums], Nick Bockrath [lead guitar], and Matthan Minster [guitar, keys, backing vocals]— forging new musical ground, while maintaining their uncompromising creativity and wildly cathartic performances. “To me, Neon Pill is the first record where we were consistently uninfluenced, and I mean that in a positive way,” observes Matthew. “Everything is undoubtedly expressed through having settled into finding our own voice. We’ve always drawn inspiration from artists we love, and at times we’ve even emulated some of them to a certain degree. With this album, having gone through so much, life had almost forced us into becoming more and more comfortable with ourselves. We weren’t reaching for much outside of the pure experience of self expression, and simultaneously not necessarily settling either. We just found a uniqueness in simply existing.”

From their humble beginnings in Bowling Green, Kentucky, Cage The Elephant have gone on to become one of the generation’s premier rock bands. They have earned dozens of Gold, Platinum, and Multiplatinum certifications, tallied over 5 billion streams, and notched ten #1 records on Alternative Radio and 5 #1 records on Triple A Radio. Their previous two albums Tell Me I’m Pretty [2015] and Social Cues [2019] garnered consecutive Best Rock Album GRAMMY® Awards. They are maybe most celebrated for their live show. The stage is their home turf, where they are most comfortable, and their performances, ecstatic and unchained, as well as cathartic and soul bearing are what Neon Pill achieves in documenting.

Neon Pill, produced by John Hill, materialized during sessions at Sonic Ranch in El Paso, Electric Lady in New York, Sound Emporium in Nashville, Echo Mountain in North Carolina, and at Hill’s own studio in Los Angeles, and alchemized a season of tragedy and turbulence into the twelve tracks on their sixth full-length album. Nine months  into the pandemic, Matthew and Brad lost their father. The band weathered the back-to-back deaths of friends, while Matthew experience depression and a mental breakdown, culminating in hospitalization. Coming out on the other side, he learned quite a bit about himself, and gained a whole lot of strength and wisdom. Neon Pill came to life in the eye of the storm.

Today, the band share their new song, “Out Loud” the emotional centerpiece of Neon Pill. Backed by stark piano, Matthew’s bare delivery quakes as he sings, “Man, I really messed up now.”  “Maybe it’s so straightforward and honest, because I didn’t know if it would see the light of day,” he admits. “‘Out Loud’ is very connected to my father. My dad’s the reason we discovered music in the first place. When he died, ‘Out Loud’ just poured out of me. My efforts towards the song were deeply rooted in paying honor to him, and I knew it meant a lot to Brad too,” he remarks. That, also in connection with the difficulties that I was dealing with at that time. It was almost a subconscious apology of sorts before I was fully capable of grasping the gravity of it all. Subconsciously working through it while channeling all of the adversity my family faced growing up coming full circle into my adult life in this one song.” The release of this song follows the latest single, “Neon Pill.” Listen to it here.

Since forming in 2006, Cage The Elephant have quietly bloomed as one of this generation’s premier rock bands buoyed by uncompromising creativity and wildly cathartic performances. Thus far, they have earned dozens of Gold, Platinum, and Multi Platinum certifications, tallied 5 billion streams and counting, and notched ten #1 records on Alternative Radio and 5 #1 records on Triple A Radio. The guys consecutively garnered two GRAMMY® Awards in the category of “Best Rock Album” for both Tell Me I’m Pretty [2015] and Social Cues [2019]. Of the latter, Entertainment Weekly raved, “The album's introspection paired with its urgent energy make Cage The Elephant sound more passionate than ever.” In the meantime, their music has also surged through popular culture as “Cigarette Daydreams” graced the soundtrack of Marvel’s Spider-Man 2 blockbuster video game, “Goodbye” appeared in The Summer I Turned Pretty, and “Trouble” powered a global campaign for Amazon Prime. Plus, they’re the rare force of nature who can inspire millions of TikTok creates or hold their own on stage with Dave Grohl and duet with Iggy Pop and Beck. The Kentucky-bred six-piece instinctually lean on their enduring bond as both musicians and friends to get through anything and everything. Together, the band members make sense of life’s unpredictability and uncertainty via music. Moments of elation might take the form of sticky hooks, swaggering rhythms, or upbeat guitars, while tense riffs and jittery grooves could give shape to feelings of anxiety, doubt, or instability. As such, the group fearlessly alchemize a season of tragedy and turbulence into the twelve tracks on their sixth full-length album, Neon Pill [RCA Records].