Photo by Neil Krug
Cage the Elephant finally announced the release of their fifth studio album Social Cues, set for release April 19. The first single, “Ready to Let Go,” produced by John Hill (Florence + The Machine, Portugal. The Man, tUnE-yArDs), dropped with a new music video.
Social Cues will follow up their Grammy-winning album Tell Me I’m Pretty with 13 new tracks, including a collaboration with Beck. The lead single “Ready to Let Go” is deceptively upbeat, set against the visuals of lead singer Matt Shultz performing some eerie underground rituals. He says the album was written during the unraveling of a relationship.
In order to get through it, Shultz “explored the hidden recesses of his psyche, creating characters to tell different parts of his personal story,” according to a statement.
“It can be a vehicle to act out things that are hard to confront.” Shultz explains, “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 (Darren) Aronofsky.”
Cage The Elephant will headline Shaky Knees festival in Atlanta on May 4th. More 2019 dates will be announced soon. Check out the video for “Ready to Let Go” below.
Social Cues Tracklist:
- Broken Boy
- Social Cues
- Black Madonna
- Night Running (Cage The Elephant, Beck)
- Skin and Bones
- Ready To Let Go
- House of Glass
- Love’s the Only Way
- The War is Over
- Dance Dance
- What I’m Becoming
- Tokyo Smoke
- Goodbye