By Shannon Carlin
Cage the Elephant released their third album Melophobia only six months ago, but they’re already working on its follow-up. For a band who usually takes two to three years between records, the decision to immediately get back to work was a new and welcome change.
“I always come out of the studio and I feel empty, I feel almost paranoid that I’ll never write another song,” guitarist, Brad Shultz told Radio.com at Coachella. “This is the first time I’ve came out of the studio and was just so inspired from the steps that we took forward on this record that I just continued to write.”
Matt Shultz, Brad’s brother and Cage’s lead singer, said with Melophobia, the band “broke a wall down” and became more open to trying new things.
“In the past I think that we relied on the heroes of our adolescence to kind of shape our music,” Matt said. “On this record, we really found our own voice and it became more about allowing our emotions or some kind of story to shape a song rather than borrowing from the people we admired.”
The brothers say they’ve been writing a lot recently and already have a bunch of demos stashed on their phones. And even though the band doesn’t plan on heading back into the studio until the fall, Matt and Brad have started a friendly competition of sorts over who can write the most songs until then.
“I’ve got 143 on my phone,” Matt said. “How many do you have?”
“Well, I have 162,” Brad responded. “So I beat you.”
“143 was six months ago,” Matt said with a smile.
Related: Interview: Cage The Elephant on Stage Dives, ‘Morbid Relationships’ & Roller Disco
As for if the band will push their boundaries far enough to perhaps make their fourth album a country one, Brad doesn’t see it happening. “I think we might make a comedy country record,” he said laughing.
Matt, on the other hand, seems a little more open to the idea.
“I would never count anything out,” he said. “I could definitely see us putting a little bit of a western feel into the music.”
Watch Radio.com’s interview with Cage the Elephant above to see the Shultz brothers talk about how they got Juliette Lewis to be in their “Take It Or Leave It” video, why they thought they owed it to their fans to be more honest and how country music shaped Nirvana‘s sound.
