Social Cues - Cage The Elephant: Review

Cage The Elephant

is a Kentucky based rock band that has released 5 albums to date employing different styles and approaches throughout their career. They scored two alt-rock radio hits in the late 2000's with Ain't No Rest For The Wicked and Back Against The Wall and continued this success into the 2010's with songs like Shake Me Down, Come A Little Closer and Trouble. 

Review By Lavender:

I consider myself a pretty big fan of Cage The Elephant but even that doesn't mean I've exonerated the band from their hit or miss nature. Their first self-titled album is a jangly and jammy piece indebted to southern rock for it's sound and southern folk for it's lyrics. As big of a fan of it as I was at the time even I am willing to admit it sounded better then than it does now. The follow-up was one of the most disappointing releases I have had the displeasure of being around for. Thank You, Happy Birthday was a turn for the low-fi that tried to adopt the style while ignoring the explosive songwriting elements and rebellious attitude that makes it work. Aside from it's sole hit Shake Me Down, Happy Birthday is a moment I very much wish I could forget. This is why it was so surprising to me that the band would follow-up this down point with their best project to date and one of my favorite rock albums of this entire decade Melophobia. Top to bottom Melophobia is one of the hardest rocking and most interesting rock albums you'll find in the 2010's from and it's psychedelic sound and blurry mixing are a combination I've been begging the band to revisit for a long time. The band's 2015 record Tell Me I'm Pretty brought on Dan Auerbach of the Black Keys for production and came out fittingly tame. While the songwriting was sharp the lack of punchy moments sold Pretty short and it ended up less memorable than it could have been. I will also admit that I was surprisingly pleased with the four singles the band released in promotion of this project, but unfortunately now that it's here I can tell that the singles were the albums ceiling more than a signifier of more to come. 

Let's talk about those singles first. Ready To Let Go came first and I enjoy it to this day. A driving and catchy rock tune with sharp verses and a surprisingly catchy hook, they aren't reinventing the wheel here but it was a solid lead single that I've had in rotation since I first heard it. They followed this up with the even better House Of Glass, a brooding song with a captivating performance that transitions into an explosive chorus with a killer hook. This song sets a tone for the attitude you'll hear across Social Cues but the album doesn't quite live up to how interesting the instrumentation is here. 

This was followed by Night Running featuring Beck, a combo that had the potential to be one of the most dated songs of the year but both acts actually bring great moments to the track. Beck handles the verses and his performance is soft but quite driving and Matt Shultz handles yet another pretty tight hook. The attitude is once again measured and dark by rock standards which is certainly an element I wish the band played with more across this record. Finally the fourth single and closing track to the album is Goodbye an acoustic ballad that calls back on prior successes of the band like Trouble and Cigarette Daydreams. Goodbye by comparison is even more somber, emotionally dense and stripped back. The ambiance of the moment is intoxicating and it feels like a fitting way to end off a project that exists in quite a somber and serious place. 

There are a handful of songs across this album that mirror the success of the singles, Black Madonna for instance is one of my favorite tracks here. It's a lowkey cut with a killer hook that stuck with me right away. With some of the best songwriting you'll find on the album and a simple but effective instrumental this is quite a shining moment for the Cage The Elephant formula. What I'm Becoming is basically a lighter version of Goodbye. It's a solid song with a catchy refrain and softer instrumentation than much of the rest of the album but not necessarily a standout moment given how excellent Goodbye is. Finally the title track Social Cues has a catchy vocal refrain and is honestly quite the dancy experience that makes for one of the few true highlights in the first leg of the album. 

Social Cues also contains a handful of almost there tracks that are just missing something to help make them better tunes. The opening track Broken Boy has a decent simple chorus that matches with it's distorted surf rock guitars but ends on a real head scratching moment that doesn't let the song reach it's progression and kind of leaves the song on a bad note. Dance Dance while not a Fall Out Boy cover, is a pretty solid track that is one of the harder ones here and has some cool verses bookended by big drum kicks. But the hook is a questionable moment, it is a catchy chorus for sure with some bright instrumentation and a humming chorus but the lack of predominant lyrics is a choice I couldn't disagree with more. The mix makes the long silence from Matt Shultz seem deafening and is an incredibly strange moment that drags the track down. There are a handful of other songs here that are just far too plain to be interesting, both Skin And Bones and Tokyo Smoke get something going but never really release and what is left is just some boring filler tracks. 

Two of the tracks I didn't enjoy much at all land back to back in the middle of the project. The War Is Over is a cripplingly generic pop rock tune that sounds like it could be written by any of your most basic rock radio features and sees Cage really selling themselves short from a quality perspective all around. Finally Love's The Only Way is a far to tame ballad that has no resemblance of being catchy and doesn't fit at all with the established sonic and lyrical themes of the album, making it stand out like a sore thumb in more ways than one. 

When looking back at Social Cues one of the biggest overarching surprises is just how tame this album is. From one of the best rock bands around the past 10 years you can clearly see moments here where they are working with the expertise they have built on. But from it's ceiling to its floor this album is far to generic and lacks the experimentation and groundbreaking sound blends that Cage made their name off of. On the other side of the coin there really isn't anything too bad here and the veteran status that the group has developed comes with a knack for production and songwriting that is agreeable and interesting even if it isn't incredible. This is a good album that could have been great, by a band from whom we should expect excellence. 6.5/10

Best Track: House Of Glass

For more alternative rock check out my review of Weezer's Weezer (The Black Album) here.