Cage the Elephant - Melophobia

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We had a gentleman come into the store last night as I was getting ready to leave.  He asked me “What has come out this month that you really like?”  I felt a little hard pressed to answer with something really new and interesting.   He was pumped to talk to us about stuff he had bought last month from us, (Man Man and Mister Heavenly) which I am proud to say I recommended to him.  However, in that vein of music, it is really hard to find bands like that beyond Islands.  So I told him to let me think about it and get back to him.  Hopefully sir, you are reading this, and can see what I am recommending.  This week’s pick is Cage The Elephant – Melophobia.

I have to put this out there before I start actually talking about the album.  When I heard Cage the Elephant’s first album, I hated it.  It didn’t appeal to me at all and even though there were cool things about it, I had a hard time actually listening to the songs.  They seemed green and uninspired, and quite honestly relied to heavily on studio tricks.  Melophobia is not like that at all.  I would say it sounds like a cross between Islands (on The Arm’s Way) and The Black Keys (as far as vocal sounds and production goes) with a little Dr. Dog sprinkled in for good measure.  There aren’t any remnants of what I disliked about their debut.  It seems like they learned how to be in a band, how to own their sound, and how to write a cohesive album over the course of the past few years.  The vocals sound great, a little overdriven, and kinda dirty.  The guitars are fuzzy and still sound tight despite the noisy approach that their engineer took to recording them.  I enjoyed the way the songs flowed into one another as well, it seemed very honest and not contrived or forced.

                  In short, I would recommend Melophobia to any fans of the doom-wop-indie genre, even though it is slightly outside the realm, it has a lot of what is cool about that type of music.  Namely the production, playing style and subject matter.  It lacks the 50’s-ish Marty McFly at the “Enchantment Under the Sea Dance” chord progressions favored by bands in the genre, but I like the tonality of the record as a whole.  There is an overall similarity to bands like Alt J, but without the (excuse the judgement) cheezyness, and is textural without being too layered to the point of self indulgence.  Melophobia is a great example of learning from experience, which is exactly what Cage the Elephant has done. 

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