Bowling Green, Kentucky is a small town in the American south. It’s best known for manufacturing Chevrolet Corvettes and Fruit Of The Loom underwear. Soon, it’s going to be best known for manufacturing thunderously sexy rock’n’roll. And with that, the next great American rock band. Meet Cage The Elephant: they’re coming your way. Matt Schultz (vocals), his brother Brad (guitar) plus their friends Daniel Titchenor (bass), Lincoln Parish (guitar) and Jared Champion (drums) have been tearing across the U.S., flooring everyone in their wake with their funked-up desert punk. They share the roar of Queens Of The Stone Age, the bounce of Beck, the psychedelics of Jimi Hendrix and the funk of Rage Against The Machine. While others like Kings of Leon have toed the line of a fairly southern rock sound, Cage The Elephant is all over the map, from blues to rapid-fire early ‘80s punk, from Chuck Berry to Nirvana. When their debut album hits in 2008 they’ll be impossible to ignore, but their story begins a long time ago in a galaxy far, far away. Matt and Brad, along with Daniel, grew up on an alternative religious commune. “Our parents were kind of Jesus freaks,” recalls Brad, “they were like a bunch of hippies and then they found God on acid. They were big hippies and then they became hardcore Christians.” The metal scene is strong in Bowling Green, but the three of them bonded when they were turned onto rock’n’roll by Jimi Hendrix. They didn’t get to listen to much of it at home. “If my Dad was feeling saucy he’d put Pink Floyd on,” chuckles Brad. He was an old rocker too, Joe Cocker, Pink Floyd, Bob Dylan. But I can’t remember listening to much that wasn’t Christian until Mom and Dad got divorced.” Mr Schlutz is “a lot more chilled out now,” and right behind the band. But back then their love affair with music had to be a more covert operation. Concerned that his sons were being exposed to songs about suicide, he smashed up a Pearl Jam tape one afternoon. “He wouldn’t let us listen to that shit,” says Matt, “but we would sneak that stuff. We had this big crate of tapes, I remember sneaking all kinds of shit.” Sneak they did: The White Stripes, Green Day, Kings Of Leon, Queens Of The Stone Age. That, coupled with the funk of Rage Against The Machine, Beck and the Beastie Boys, the virgin sound of Cage The Elephant was being forged. Daniel, Jared and Lincoln joined up, the band toured, demoed, did the stuff that bands do. But something special was building; people were listening and a fever soon spread from that little Kentucky town. Stints on Lollapolooza and Bonaroo touring festivals followed, which led to tours with Queens Of The Stone Age and Wolfmother. But the band knew that their destiny also lay in the UK. After signing with DPS in the U.S., they recorded their album in Nashville in just ten days with producer Jay Joyce. (“the best fucking producer in the world!”), signed a UK deal with Relentless Records and towards the end of 2007 played a series of electrifying tour supports with Foals and The Raveonettes. You probably want to know why they’re called Cage The Elephant now. In Indian philosophies, the elephant is a symbol of strength and goodness. The Hindu god of wisdom, Ganesh, has an elephant’s head. “It’s strong and it’s honest and it’s loyal. And our name kind of stands for people, the whole of society, the people we all are by nature – it seems like people want to cage the elephant. It seems like they want to cage all the good in the world. It’s not just the government or the media, it’s everywhere. But you turn on the news and hear ‘today 26 people got gunned down, and one guy got his head chopped off, and here’s a picture of it. It’s like there’s no hope, and somebody’s caged the elephant. But you can’t do that.” Cage The Elephant won’t tell you how to live your life. They don’t force a message, but they do share a philosophy; a quest for universal freedom that shoots through all of their hair-raising songs. It’s there in the piledriving desert punk of ‘Free Love’, as stirring a song about the pleasures of the flesh that you’ll hear all year. The last song written for the album came about as sessions were closing and the band got the collective horn with excitement. “It’s about sex,” chuckles Matt. “Whatever kind of sex you wanna have, and wherever you wanna have it, if you wanna have orgies and group sex you can have it. And feel good about it! Don’t feel guilty!” Then there’s the heavy groove of ‘Aint No Rest For The Wicked’, written after Matt gave a hitcher a lift who turned out to be a prostitute. He freaked out and judged her, but wrote the song after reconsidering his own position. “There’s a lot of shit that I’ve done that I don’t want people to know about, and I know that everyone in this world is the same. We all do things that aren’t necessarily honourable. That was the basis of where the song came from – we all do wrong things, and instead of looking at the negatives all the time its better if you try to look at the positives in people and have a little respect for them.” ‘Backstabbing Betty’s discordant Americana tells an everyday tale of having your heart broken by a no-good woman. “We’re tired of hearing songs about evil guys!” says Brad. “There’s evil women out there too!” The psychedelic, metallic ‘Tiny Little Robots’ a plea for freedom of thought. The low-slung declaration of intent ‘In One Ear’ concerns the futility of talking shit about other people (“whatever you do, even if you’re employee of the month at Toys R Us, there’s gonna be people who are talking shit behind your back. If you’re doing anything positive, achieving anything, they’ll try to pick you apart..” One listen to these songs will burn the melodies onto your soul. Watch them live and your hairs will stand on end. Dig a little deeper, and they’ll give you something to believe in. You’ll have a blast along the way, of course, just as these five men from a small town with big imaginations were inspired to follow up on the holy calling of rock’n’roll. “We were raised in pretty hardcore churches. And you get a lot of that same shit; ‘I took the preacher out today for dinner, that makes me the coolest person in church today!” Says Matt in conclusion: “There’s just as much bullshit at church because church is run by people. But one thing that I took from church that I’ll carry with me for the rest of my life whether I’m gonna be a Buddhist or a Christian, the thing I can take away – do to each other as you would have done to you, and don’t freaking judge people for the things that they do.” Which is as good a description as we can think of of somebody setting the elephant free. You may wish to stand back, because it’s on the loose and coming your way.