Cage the Elephant Battle Psychedelic Beasts in ‘Come a Little Closer’
Cage the Elephant have offered up a brand new music video for “Come a Little Closer,” a track off their third LP, Melophobia. The eye-popping clip finds the band transported to, and transposed onto, a vibrant animated planet populated by strange creatures that frontman Matt Shultz must contend with on his kaleidoscopic odyssey. Shadow monsters chase the group into a canoe before Shultz becomes whale food and must literally make his way out of the belly of the beast. After keeping himself from being eaten again – this time by a bunch of birds – Shultz bounces across the planetary expanse on the back of a flaming lion, waving so long to his bandmates as he heads for a planet made of skulls, which he’s able to annihilate before it can chop him into bits.
Where Does Cage the Elephant’s ‘Thank You, Happy Birthday’ Rank on Our 50 Best Albums of 2011?
It’s wild, almost weary stuff, like a more bummed out, existential Yellow Submarine. Indeed, Melophobia found Cage the Elephant delving into darker themes, with Shultz telling Rolling Stone that he tried to stop being as poetic with his lyrics and simply write as he spoke. On top of the “struggle to maintain that naked honesty,” Shultz admitted he grappled with intense loneliness during the writing process, brought on by a particularly dreary winter and the weight of basic human expectations.
“People work so tirelessly to project images in order to be accepted, when really, you don’t owe that to anyone,” Shultz said. “You just have to stay true to your convictions. Our biggest struggle as human beings is to project ourselves as something that society has deemed admirable or likable instead of being honest.”