Cage the Elephant

Overcoming fear leads to inspiration for the indie rockers’ latest

Cage the Elephant picked an odd title for their third album, Melophobia. The name refers to a fear of music, which seems like an unfortunate condition for a group of musicians. In the case of the Kentucky quintet, though, they’re only averse to certain types of music—specifically, the kind that doesn’t feel honest. “We were trying to fight that voice of fear that tells you not to do a certain thing because it’s not cool, or won’t be perceived in the right light,” singer Matthew Shultz says. He sat down to discuss how that goal affected the new album.

 

What prompted the album title?

It’s not so much a general fear of music. When we’re making a record, the struggle is the fight against fear-based writing, to be pulled away from your convictions and write to project images rather than to be a good communicator. In the human struggle, there’s an overwhelming urge to project images that are deemed socially acceptable. You try not to be poetic, look artistic or intellectual, or to write a song just to be a pop song. Or, on the other end, writing a song for the sake of obscurity. We really just want to be good communicators and write in naked honesty. That’s our melophobia.

 

Did you share a common vision?

We started on opposite sides of the spectrum about where we wanted to see this record go. But it worked out for the best because it gave the record more diversity, more depth. I’m really glad it turned out that way, because you can be your own worst enemy. You can get stuck in your particular vision and have blinders on, and not see beyond that. You abandon so much because you’re trying to hold fast to where you want to take a creative work. It’s nice to have other people in the band to reopen your eyes. It’s always a learning experience. One of the strong points of our band is that every member is a writer, so we have a good check-and-balance system. Each person is on a different level at different times, and we balance each other out.

 

What did that mean for Melophobia?

We’ve always held true to the motto that many literature writers hold to, which is to read way more than you write. So in a musical sense, we listened to as much diverse music as we could, and then interpreted it our way. We were trying to find a hole that we didn’t necessarily hear being filled at that time. On this record, I stopped listening to recordings altogether. It was like trying to draw a childhood best friend purely from memory. It was incredible the way my mind would create sonics that never existed based purely on emotional attachments to the music.

 

Did you feel a sense of vulnerability?

Any time you give a piece of yourself, you feel vulnerable. I tried to think about writing this record as if I had a parent who was lying on their deathbed. I’d think about the types of things I would want to say and write from that mind frame. If it’s really easy to say, then it’s probably not worth saying. Though that depends on where you are in your life. Sometimes difficult things can be very easy to say.

 

Did that mindset lead to themes?

I don’t know if there was any particular theme other than the human experience—trying to capture the rise and fall, the peaks and valleys, and all the things between.

–Eric R. Danton