The majority of the material on Social Cues was written during the unravelling of Shultz’s relationship. In order make sense of such a difficult experience, he explored the hidden recesses of his psyche, creating characters to tell different parts of his personal story. He explains, “it can be a vehicle to act out things that are hard to confront.” He went on to say, “when I’m creating, I try to put myself in a reactive state of improvisational thought. I let images just arise in my mind and wait for it to evoke an emotional response and then when it does, I know I’m on to something. I was watching a lot of Fassbinder films, like World on a Wire and The Bitter Tears of Petra von Kant. I was thinking about their beauty coupled with the graphic surrealism of Aronofsky.”
Deeply inspired by punk music, brothers Matt and Brad Shultz began playing music in high-school with fellow students Jared Champion and Daniel Tichenor. Shortly after forming the band, they made the bold move to London to begin their career. Their self-titled debut album gained them international attention, catapulting them up the Billboard Alternative and Rock charts and achieving Platinum certification. Cage the Elephant has released three additional studio albums – 2011’s Thank You, Happy Birthday, the Gold-certified Melophobia and the GRAMMY®-winning Tell Me I’m Pretty. At radio, Cage The Elephant holds the record for the most #1 Alternative songs of any artist this decade. Their most recent release was their expansive live album, Unpeeled, which found the band performing stripped down and backed by a string quartet and a choir. Based in Nashville, Cage The Elephant is vocalist Matt Shultz, rhythm guitarist Brad Shultz, drummer Jared Champion, bassist Daniel Tichenor, lead guitarist Nick Bockrath and keyboardist Matthan Minster.
