Cage The Elephant Release Surreal Video For “Trouble”

Grammy-nominated alt-rockers Cage The Elephant have released their latest single Trouble from their 2015 album ‘Tell Me I’m Pretty’. The video for the track is the directorial debut for Cage The Elephant singer Matt Shultz.

“The video follows a young man who is running from his past and at the same time afraid of the future. He is afraid of becoming his father and inheriting the damage or weakness that he saw in his father.

“He chases success and decadence but none of these things can fix the damage within him, and in the end he sees himself to be part of the falseness in the world,” Shultz said.

This basically translates to a video that looks like a low-budget homage to Alejando Jodorowsky. The video features visuals elements that seem to invoke 1960s and 70s psychedelia, specifically works like the surrealist-western El Topo and Santa Sangre, if only for brief moments before flashing to something else.  The track itself is like an amalgamation of Where Is My Mind by the Pixies, the vocals of Kasabian, and the drum beat of Breezeblocks by Alt J.

‘Tell Me I’m Pretty’ is the fourth studio album from Cage The Elephant and was produced by Dan Auebach (Lana Del Rey, Ray Lamontange, The Black Keys, The Arcs), and was mixed by Tom Elmhirst (Amy Winehouse, Adele, Florence + The Machine).

The lead single Mess Around recently topped the Alternative and AAA radio charts as Cage The Elephant’s sixth Alternative #1. This officially puts them in the same league as Linkin Park, Red Hot Chili Peppers, Foo Fighters, U2, Green Day, and R.E.M as one of seven bands that have more than five #1’s in the 28 years of the Alternative chart.