'Cage The Elephant' Review: Ain't No Rest For The Wicked, Lads

Some people dream of being rock stars. They practice and they hone their skills, they train and they study the trends of the time. Others don’t really have a choice. Born firebrands and hell raisers, with the compulsion for incessant noise, spectacle and attention rooted in them deep, you can’t imagine them ending up anywhere but on stage. Cage the Elephant plant themselves squarely in the latter category.

Not that you’d know it right away. Compared to the slow-burning and charming low-key family-band vibes of their opening act, CTE’s set opener 'Cry Baby' whiffed of lad rock when seen live, reminiscent of the Fratellis and the wrong side of Kasabian’s discography. Their newest album was produced by the Black Key’s Dan Auerbach, and it’s evident. It’s catchy and easy listening, but it’s definitely got more of their producer’s latter day wannabe radio blues running through it (see 'Mess Around', for a good example) than the earthy raw kick that Cage the Elephant have always seemed to be gunning for. It’s grand, good even, but some of their unique, essential charm is lost in the process. For a moment, there’s a sense that maybe the inevitable sweeping death of indie rock has finally reared on them too. It’s not a bad opening song, by no means bad - but it doesn’t bode well for the rest of the set.

This sweeping death has at this stage caught everyone from the Strokes to the Yeah Yeah Yeahs in its clutches. Cage the Elephant’s peers are apparently split these days between floundering, clinging to a bygone heyday of skinny jeans and guitar hooks, and appearing content to let that same scene die, or die down – at least for now. After watching these men perform for a few songs, around about when the banging piano riff 'Spiderhead' kicks in, you start to wonder if the spirit of that scene is as dead as you might think. By song number four, 'Aberdeen' off of 2011’s ‘Thank You Happy Birthday’, that mentality feels like an affront. CTE are still kicking, kicking back hard against the well-plumbed depths of indie mediocrity, and keeping afloat – surfing, even - in a sea of homogenous indie rock and repetitive arena choruses, propelled by sheer gusto and blistering force of will. The audience are loving it. And they band are only getting started.

Their zeal for performance is unreal. With every song you expect them to flag, to give in and give away the performers behind the performance. But the opposite seems to happen – they’re energised more song on song, like they could do this ‘til the audience drops, like they’re daring the audience to test them on that. The audience explodes where you might think they’re due to deflate. The songs rise where you expect the songs to fall, and just when you feel a dip coming on, the band leaps and surges (lead vocalist Matt Schultz literally leaping into the air, or his brother, guitarist Brad, into the crowd). After the anthemic, iconic swells of 'Trouble', there’s a dim sense of the set being about half way through and we, the poor audience, are due a break. Not a chance. The band impossibly double down with their hit calling card from 2009 video game ‘Borderlands’, 'Ain’t No Rest for the Wicked', and the crowd explodes. Suddenly you realise this is not going to let up at all for the whole gig, and we’re only half way.

The Schultz brothers whip out every trick in the book to inject the songs with their rough-and-ready vitality they don’t always capture in recording. They jump around, throw themselves on the ground, make intense eye contact with individual gig goers, spit water in the air and catch it back in their mouths, crowd surf; every trick in the book. You might say there’s very little you wouldn’t have seen before, but it’s like a low-key master class in tried-and-test showmanship, except given by a Scarface impersonator with a firework up his arse. After a teased out pre-encore wait, the bands comes back out to belt out fan favourites ‘Cigarette Daydreams’ and the emotive belter ‘Shake Me Down’. By the end, the Schultz brothers are crowd surfing again - Matt literally stand-up surfing atop the crowd, making every other rock star’s efforts look feeble - and the band have proclaimed that they’re going to move to Dublin. They look like they could do this every night. The audience look like they wouldn’t mind, either.

All that being said, they’re not entirely immune to the plagues of their forbearers. The sound quality is crisp and the performances couldn’t be faulted, but they’re not exactly ambitious in technicality either. While the tunes are often memorable, they’re far from unforgettable, and though each song does manage to wring out a firecracker hook or singalong chorus, it’s only just about - like the band is only ever one step ahead of losing your attention. You could argue one step is all they need.

These were the little cracks in the noughties rock monolith that quickly banished all but the best from that same scene to the back of the public consciousness. It felt inevitable watching other bands, like the sheer pomp and raucous energy of this style of music seemed impossible to sustain and destined to fizzle out beyond one or two hit tunes. But CTE didn’t just learn what to do from their progenitors, they also learned a bit about what not to do. Whereas many indie bands ended up too clean and polished, CTE let themselves get dirty, and messy, and voice-cracking raw. They know that excess is the name of their game, when their peers forgot and tried to reign it in, to “mature”. And while other bands were content to let history swallow them without a fight, Cage the Elephant never once stop giving it their all, even for a second. Ain’t no rest for the wicked, indeed.

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