Cage The Elephant

Cage the Elephant formed in Bowling Green, Kentucky, in 2006, then did something few Southern garage bands would think of: they packed up and moved to London in 2008, just before their self-titled debut hit the shops. Matt Shultz sings, his older brother Brad plays rhythm guitar, Lincoln Parish handled lead guitar, Daniel Tichenor holds down the bass and Jared Champion the drums.

That debut is a gloriously scrappy thing, a grab bag of classic rock swagger, '90s alternative, blues, punk and funk. "Ain't No Rest for the Wicked" rolls in on a loose, bluesy strut with Matt half-talking, half-sneering his way through it; "In One Ear" and "Back Against the Wall" crank up the fuzz and the attitude. It's the sound of a band that has studied its record collection hard and then decided to play it all at once, as loud as possible, and the singles caught on with radio on both sides of the Atlantic.

The records since have kept moving. Thank You, Happy Birthday, in 2011, leaned hard into punk and wore its love of the Pixies and Nirvana openly, with "Shake Me Down" as its brooding centerpiece. Parish left in 2013 to work as a producer, with Nick Bockrath and Matthan Minster coming in on guitar and keyboards, and that year's Melophobia gave them the wistful "Cigarette Daydreams" and "Come a Little Closer". Dan Auerbach produced Tell Me I'm Pretty in 2015 ("Mess Around", "Trouble", "Cold Cold Cold"), a live set called Unpeeled arrived in 2017, and Social Cues, in 2019, brought "Ready to Let Go" and "Black Madonna". Neon Pill followed on May 17, 2024.

The trophies came too: 14 number-one hits on Billboard's Alternative Airplay chart, and the Grammy for Best Rock Album twice, for Tell Me I'm Pretty in 2017 and Social Cues in 2020. Not bad for a bunch of Kentucky kids who crossed an ocean before their first record was even out.

Written with AI assistance from RockLists chart data, MusicBrainz and Wikipedia.