Getting Closer to Cage The Elephant's Latest Likely Will Send Chills Down Your Spine

How about a disorienting head trip into the world of alt-rock? Here's something new for you to sink your teeth into. Anybody who's spent time at a Halloween party walking through a haunted house knows that part of the scare factor involves walking down a dark hallway not knowing what's going to join you in the nothingness. Will it be a skeleton dropped from the ceiling. A ghoul emerging from the next door you pass? Bowling Green, Kentucky's Cage The Elephant has done its homework on making the hairs on the back of our neck stand up. Single #1 from "Melophobia", "Come a Little Closer", is gifted with that unavoidable sense of foreboding similar to the train wreck you can't avert your gaze from. Good houses, be they brick and plywood or B-flat, C-sharp, need a firm foundation to stand on or else the house crumbles into dust, leaving passersby to muse, "What a waste of time and energy that must have been. No wasted effort from Cage The Elephant. Daniel Tichenor applied a menacing bass early on so we know the street we're about to walk down is about a million miles removed from the peace (imagined or otherwise) of everyday suburbia where the electric company keeps the lamp posts regularly lit full blast at night and all the stray dogs have been reunited with their worried owners. The initial framework of bass, lead guitar, and drums possesses the necessary spookiness to keep us engaged whether we're certain we want to be or not. There's this kaleidoscopic mood shift from the first chord selection (stalwart bravery) to the second (slightly less self-assured) to the third one (rattled but determined to see this disfiguring quest through anyway. So much is communicated just by a liberal back and forth interplay between minor and major chords. These shifts set up a sense of time and place, a setting for the theatrics to follow. I'll lay this nugget on the table for you from the get go. I can't say as I grasp what lead vocalist Matthew Shultz is saying. What does seem apparent is that Father Time has more than a walk-on role to play. I always knew it flew by. Hell, at the office I'm conflicted between wanting to let it fly by so I can run back home and corrode my insides with Twinkies and wanting the day to proceed just slowly enough to prove I was in fact an active participant. For the first time ever I'm being informed time shakes. I always thought time had no discernible human feelings. Turns out, at least according to Matthew it can shake. Shake equals fear. Fear equals running from whatever boogeyman is tearing your serene world apart. Matt deserves a pat on the back for actually humanizing the very dehumanizing thing that's slowly sucking the life force out of all of us. I feel at home working with the haunted house motif. That's time and again due to cryptic lyrics that hint at the idea that things in Cage The Elephant's current universe aren't what they appear to be. If you want to get deep philosophical literal about what's being sung you could pose the argument that "Come a Little Closer" is pointing the finger at society in general, the queue of players marching across the life stage that have this knack for blurring the line between what's real and what's fabricating to keep the public paranoid and groping for answers. Lincoln Parish picks his shots on lead guitar. Enough discomfort to keep us all clinging to Matthew in hopes that he can do more than ask us if we understand the things we've been dreaming. A lot of times when I'm staring at the inside of my eyelids I really don't understand what I'm dreaming. Frankly when the dreams involve weaponry, bodily harm, and the all-important scream no one hears, I'm just glad that nightmare has been stricken from the record. Jared Champion pounds out some blisteringly aggressive drumming that ups the ick factor by at least a few notches. All we as active listeners can do is keep walking down the hallway hoping we maintain enough of our wits to make it through to the other side with only minimal psychic damage. Matthew doesn't sing with a chip on his shoulder or unresolved anger. There's more of a adamant pleading. "Come a little closer than you seem". Bridge the fright gap that keeps us separated behind an unspoken barrier of misgivings. Why is it that time is flying by yet the role players Matt plants into his verses do nothing more than sing along. Does he inform us these masses are helpless to stop their own oblivion so singing along is the only way they know how to make the best of time and by association life passing them by. Those words alone are so eerie, so dismantling. It's as if a repeated wave of ice breath passes up the spines of the disenfranchised. They're resigned to it but, hey, at least the swirl of macabre is playing their song. Detachment is the order of the day. An isolation too heavy to lift with any level of ease contributes to the blackness in Cage The Elephant's house of horror. Brad Shultz does a stellar job steering this ship towards whatever indifference iceberg is at the other end of the hall. Quality rhythm guitar from a man comfortable in his role if not comfortable with the nausea-inducing direction the chords and their creators opt to go in. I personally am not nauseated. I'm just as guilty of coming down with that twinge of curiosity when there's a car wreck up ahead. I'm not part of the carnage so it's okay for me to ask myself, "What's the story behind that tragic situation?" "Come a Little Closer" crooks its finger, daring us to not be a little curious about what malevolent trouble we can get into. Cage The Elepant found the keys to its prison on this go round. The goosebumps are going to stay with you long after the hellish haze trails off. If sinus clearing night terror which is brutally effective 24/7 is attractive to you then "Come a Little Closer" knows where you live. Remember to have the sense to least entertain the preventative measure of sleeping with a light on. Delectably creepy to the last wince worthy installment.