Album Recommendations | mari@macintosh.garden

Artist: Cage the Elephant

Albums are graded on a five-point scale of "Awful-Eh-Good-Great-Classic". I'm highly biased, so don't take it too seriously. Most of these come from my own collection, so the grades skew rather high. Your results may vary if you send me stuff to review.

Each album is given three Essential tracks, my personal favorites, regardless of how weird and inconsequential they are. The Quintessential pick is the one I think best represents the album as a whole, so you can try one song instead of a whole album of songs. Non-Essential picks range from merely disappointing to outright unlistenable. Read the review.

Thank You Happy Birthday (2011)

Absolutely fucking bipolar.

Thank You Happy Birthday might strike some as a little discombobulated at first. Between the spy guitar of "Always Something", the radio-friendly optimism of "Shake Me Down", the absolutely fucking manic noise fits of "Sell Yourself", and the gentle, emergent layer breeze of "Flow", the record plays like a gouged sampler tape of various fictional 90s alt rock outfits, and Cage the Elephant perfectly embodies every one. Matt Shultz puts a head on the warped bodies of every track here, interchangably cooing and screeching and proving that technically bad voices still have a place in rock music. Far be it from the tired 90s retread it could've been, they, pun not intended, really sell this one, even if the occasional track (okay, "Japanese Buffalo") prove the energy to be too much.

I avoid getting too personal in these reviews, but this album feels like a little time machine to being a little kid again. Before I got jaded, before Cage the Elephant grew in a mature singles outfit, I'd listen to this album on my iPod late at night, using my DSi to browse the internet (the parental locks meant no computer after 10PM). I was a huge fan of their debut, having memorized every single word and loving the mopey parts just as much as the blisteringly loud parts, and Thank You Happy Birthday was the follow-up I took to summer camp and everywhere with me for months after. This album is one of the most important to me I've ever heard, but even without the nostalgia, I can safely say it holds up damn well today.

Essential:	Quintessential:	Non-Essential:	Rating:
"Always Something", "Sell Yourself", "Flow"	"Shake Me Down"	"Japanese Buffalo"	Great

Cage the Elephant (2008)

A bluesy rave-up against THE MAN.

Who the fuck told these punks from Bowling Green they could prance around on stage, writing songs about greed, vices, and the way that politics turns people into sheep? Well, anyway, I like that guy, because this album rules. This is an album I've loved for a long, long time, since I was a young lad, and a phenomenal canary trap for if someone is overly-obsessed with every band they listen to being novel or if they want them to bring the good tunes. Is Cage the Elephant novel? Absolutely not. You've heard the skronking blues guitars, you've heard the gasping, shrieking vocals, you've heard the guitar solos nestled in after the second verse—but let me tell you, Cage the Elephant do them phenomenally well. If there's a weak part of this album, I've yet to find it.

There's something hilarious about a new band starting their record off with a gigantic "fuck you" to Da Criticz, but Cage is so self-assured on "In One Ear" and delivers the track with such a musical wallop that it barely even matters. Between Matt Schulz's larger-than-the-mix, extroverted howl, Jared Champion's deceptively-nuanced drumming, and Lincoln Parish's anguished guitar soloing, if there were confidence issues here, it sure doesn't show, not in the performances nor the songwriting. The group can muscle through a loud, fast tune like "Free Love", but it's when they introduce a bit of dynamics, like on the slightly psychedelic "Lotus" or the theme to the end of your rope, "Back Against the Wall", that Cage truly stick in your head and your heart. Bless them. I hope they make it big someday.

(I suppose it's a good thing I didn't have the edition with "Cover Me Again" at the end as a kid. Aside from subverting the self-importance of the rest of their lyrics with an aching admission of phoniness as emotional body armor, thus being a far more affecting closer than "Free Love", it hits so close to home for me that I don't know if I would've been able to handle it at the much rawer age I discovered this album at. It wasn't on the original album, so I can't rank it Essential, but it's an honorary Essential. Import a copy with "Cover Me Again". You're welcome.)

Essential:	Quintessential:	Non-Essential:	Rating:
"James Brown", "Lotus", "Back Against the Wall"	"Free Love"	Negativo	Classic