Cage The Elephant Neon Pill

Cage the Elephant’s Neon Pill arrives five years after their 2019 Grammy-winning global breakthrough Social Cues. Brothers and bandleaders Matt and Brad Shultz lost their father in the interim, the group mourned the death of friends, and Matt spent time in the hospital with severe depression. This tragedy, fight, spirit and resolve is messily and triumphantly wrapped into Neon Pill, an album that finds the band forging their own sound devoid of outside influence, channelling their rollicking live show into a meditation on life, death and music’s healing power. Take the psych-folk-leaning title track, which tells the story of Matt’s battle with mental illness, looking for answers but only finding more questions. As the band so often does, they mask dark and searching lyrics with melodic candy, making these philosophical queries go down more easily. On the track, Matt sings: “It's a hit and run, oh no/Double-crossed by a neon pill/Like a loaded gun, my love/I lost control of the wheel/Double-crossed by a neon pill.” Just like the story of the band over the past five years, the track includes a phoenix-like resurgence: “Knocked down, not out, let's roll.”