Cage the Elephant: Social Cues [RCA]

Why you'll love it

This pressing comes in a gatefold jacket with a lyric insert. Social Cues won Best Rock Album at the 62nd Grammy Awards, and three of its singles, "Ready to Let Go," "Social Cues" and "Skin and Bones," topped Billboard's Alternative Songs chart.

This edition

• Gatefold jacket
• Lyric insert
• Pressed in the EU

About the album

Brad Shultz had a hunch about "Night Running." The band had the music finished but couldn't crack the verses, so he quietly sent it to Beck without telling the others, and a day or two later Beck came back with exactly what it needed. That sort of instinct runs all through Social Cues, a record Matt Shultz wrote while working through heartbreak and change.

Producer John Hill pushed the Kentucky band toward a cleaner, more cinematic sound than Tell Me I'm Pretty, with analog synths and ambient textures around live takes; the band talked about horror scores and John Carpenter as touchstones. Beck's father, the composer and arranger David Campbell, also contributed, and the album brushes against electronic pop, glam and even a little reggae. "Broken Boy" and "What I'm Becoming" wrestle with identity, "Black Madonna" glides, "Tokyo Smoke" bristles, and "Goodbye" ends things quietly.

Rolling Stone's David Fricke gave it four stars and called it the band's best album yet. They toured it all summer alongside Beck, which is the kind of thank-you note most of us would settle for.

Also at Kops: more Cage the Elephant on vinyl · browse Alternative

Tracklist

Listen

On RCA (cat# 19075-92792-1), the 2019 album.