The title of Cage the Elephant’s fourth album, Tell Me I’m Pretty (Dec. 18, RCA), isn’t a command: It’s a cry for help. “You can look at it with a dark underbelly,” says frontman Matt Shultz, 32. ” ‘Please, tell me I’m pretty — I need this!’ ” The Kentucky-bred, Nashville-based alt-rockers’ LP, produced by The Black Keys’ Dan Auerbach, swaggers with a raw, psychedelic sound — check the mod vibe on single “Mess Around,” No. 7 for a second week on Billboard’s Alternative chart — and Shultz often matches it with even rawer, semiautobiographical lyrics. As Shultz, bassist Daniel Tichenor and touring keyboardist Matthan Minster explain over breakfast at a Lower East Side hotel, depression and a childhood friend’s murder inspired some songs. (A more uplifting story about meeting Beyoncé and Jay Z at Coachella did not.)
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Guitars are becoming an endangered species in popular music. What inspired you guys to stick to your rock roots on the new album?
Shultz: At the Bonnaroo Super Jam I got the opportunity to do “Break On Through” with [The Doors’] Robby Krieger. The crowd’s response made me recognize the huge hole in pop that has been left by rock and that a lot of people are craving it. For a while now, rock has almost become a dirty word in mainstream music.
So, rock’n’roll is not dead as some critics claim?
Shultz: I don’t think it can be pinned down to a specific time or instrument. It‘s an energy and a freedom that you try to capture through great songwriting, really.
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Did any real-life stories make it onto the album?
Shultz: A lot of it is mixing moments in life with stories. “Cold Cold Cold” addresses something I’ve dealt with my whole life: a feeling of imminent doom. As far as I can remember, I’ve had this picture of this sad kind of life that I’ve lionized in my head over the years. When I was 10, there was this ice storm. I put on my coat, walked into the snow and pretended I was lost. I was so melancholy. I imagined myself turning into an ice sculpture. Then my dad pulled up: “What are you doing? It’s freezing outside. Get in the car.” When I was 12, a girl from my neighborhood was murdered. She was my little brother [Jeremy’s] girlfriend. We were all playing that day, and they went to go get some change for a drink, so we got split up. Later we found out she had been kidnapped. It was the most traumatic experience of our lives. In “Sweetie Little Jean,” I use that story as an analogy. When someone suffers from really deep depression, sometimes it’s like they’ve been abducted. And so I imagined searching all around the house for this person, but all you can find is trails of tears.
At Firefly in 2014, you told the crowd at one point: “I’m going to be as crazy as I can be right now, and I want you to top me.” And then you said, “I’m going to win.” You were walking across the upraised palms of audience members’ hands.
Schultz: I said that? Onstage, I try not to cling onto safeguards. I’m looking to have a real connection with the entire audience as if it’s one person. And so sometimes, even when I’m feeling shattered and thinking, “They can see through me. I suck right now. I hate me. Why can’t I be normal?” I remind myself, “No, this is actually what is appealing — to fall apart for real. That’s entertainment.
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Does that mean you have extra-crazy tour stories?
Tichenor: Near-death stories, for sure. We were on our tour bus in England — I guess a little alcohol was involved — and [Shultz’s older brother, rhythm guitarist] Brad and I got into a fight. I decided, “Screw this, I’m leaving,” but I didn’t realize the bus was moving. I open the door, put one foot out and Brad grabbed the back of my shirt and pulled me back in.
Shultz: We were going 80 miles an hour.
Minster: After our set at Coachella in 2014, I was wearing a gold crown that my girlfriend at the time had made. She and I were dancing to MGMT when Beyoncé came up to me and said, “I love your crown.” I just kind of trembled and handed it to her. She put it on her mom and Instagrammed a picture of it. I was kind of shaken up by the experience, so I got a cigarette out and went to this guy sitting at the nearest table: “Hey, man, do you have a light?” He points at a guy who pulls out this cigar torch, then says, “Don’t burn your hair.” It’s Jay Z. Then he says, “Hey, you want a margarita?” He had, like, 30 margaritas ready to go.
Listen to Cage the Elephant and other artists featured in this week’s issue of Billboard.
A portion of this story originally appeared in the Dec. 12 issue of Billboard.