Cage The Elephant Stirs Up Some Fog Lifting Trouble

I'm going to try a different tack to explain a song for you, dear blog followers. To do so I'll tell you what, in my opinion, Cage The Elephant's "Trouble" sounds like it's going for at the beginning and close by telling you what I think it wants to communicate at the end. Ever have one of those deep sleeps where you awaken groggy, seriously unaware that you've even entered conscious reality again and are feeling out your hazy surroundings? Cage The Elephant opens in that trance. Brad Shultz uses his keyboard as an anesthetic but no unlikable side effects result. Head tonsil flasher Matthew Shultz woo-woos his way through the first installment. Woo-woos could only exist in an alternate dimension where common sense takes a powder. Jared Champion gets deliberate about his drum contribution. A little beat here, a little beat there but no handiwork meant to bowl anyone over to where Jared gets named drummer of the year in major publications. Onward they slink. You don't have to be a morning person to understand how far the fog intervenes to make for greater intricacies in the playing. The ending settles in for a perfectly salute worthy bass display from Daniel Tichenor. He brings "Trouble" in for a landing without causing any of the titular problems. That leaves the blood and guts middle. Here's where the sideshow becomes increasingly weird. To Cage The Elephant's credit it composes for itself a highly trapeze friendly hodgepodge of audio snack treat. You go from soft touches to raw no feelings left right side up pondering. You could liken much of "Trouble's" overall feel to that of talcum powder, soft going on but an impression getting your most alert sensors ready for action has been activated. Guitar playing scoffs at lunging for higher registers, and that's good use of wisdom, pure and simple. If I'm to understand correctly Matthew doesn't want to go bananas. He as much as invokes God's help during his tribulations. Fair enough. Going off the rails traditionally isn't a barrel of laughs for too many average people. He turns to his special lady as a means of staving off the trouble that's been pecking away at him most of his life. She isn't an enabler for his woes. He won't witness her stepping into the light anyway. The sound's edges grow a bit tighter as "Trouble" progresses. Not so hard that it leaves you saying to yourself, "Can't he just pay for some therapy already. Matthew's shoes are filled by a man trying to walk the straight and narrow. We aren't chortling to ourselves as he tries to pick companionship, the trouble we all need some of, over some wildly unpredictable alternate flavor. This isn't your typical field of daisies. Some unforgiving rose thorns round out the scenario too. "Trouble", in Cage The Elephant's hands, merits getting into. The band's talent for combining delicate with tough as not completely hammered nails signifies to me that whenever they get into trouble they've bottled the formula for not allowing it to swallow them whole.