SARATOGA SPRINGS — Cage The Elephant last appeared onstage at SPAC in 2019, performing a memorable set on a memorable summer night while on a co-headlining tour with Beck. Five years later, Cage the Elephant, or CTE as they are known in some circles, return Aug. 18 to headline their own gig at Saratoga Performing Arts Center.
Scribbles from this reporter’s notebook that night:
Singer Matt Shultz, blessed with a seemingly unlimited amount of boundless energy, led Cage The Elephant through an entertaining hourlong set - crawling, taunting and exhibiting Jagger-esque dance moves in a mashed-up fury of dayglo mesh cloths. Accompanied by a strip of eternal flames and a rotisserie of flashing lights turning stage spectacle to the spectacular - yellow smoke here, green laser beams and strobes-a-plenty there – and showcasing the band at their post-Pixies singalong best, bringing the crowd to a standing cheer.
Schultz concluded the set by crowd-surfing to the outer reaches of the amphitheater while Queen’s “We Are The Champions” played over the house PA, emerging 15 minutes later as the house lights burned bright for the intermission changeover, stripped down to a pair of red gym shorts, strips of black Velcro across his upper torso, and wearing a nude bodysuit...
Cage The Elephant last week announced the band’s 45-date North American U.S. tour with its Aug. 18 Saratoga Springs stopover that will include Young The Giant & Bakar as special guests. The band’s sixth studio album, titled “Neon Pill,” will drop via RCA Records on May 17.
This week, Shultz made a public revelation via an Instagram post that he has been suffering through a mental health crisis during the past few years and spent two months in a hospital followed by months of outpatient treatment. He thanked those close to him for their support in helping him get to a better place.
“It’s a miracle that I’m here today,” he wrote. “Over the last three years, I was unknowingly fighting my way through an utter mental health crisis. In a short time, I had slipped into psychosis due to an iatrogenic response to a medication I was prescribed. It took the love and support of my brothers in the band, my community, and, most of all, my wife Eva to get me through it. Eva stayed by my side, and she saved my life countless times. To say she is a warrior and a queen is an understatement,” Schultz wrote.
“Her unwavering love coupled with professional treatment helped me to regain my grip on reality and fully recover. Along the way, I learned a lot of hard lessons, and I thank God I was able to come out on the other side. I’m humbled and grateful for the opportunity to write this message. I owe my life to God and the support system of friends, family, and Cage The Elephant. I’ll just say it now once again, because it needs to be said, ‘Thank you.’”
The new album finds the Kentucky-bred six-member CTE forging new musical ground, while maintaining their uncompromising creativity and wildly cathartic performances, according to advance press for “Neon Pill.”
“Everything is undoubtedly expressed through having settled into finding our own voice,” Schultz said, in a statement. “With this album, having gone through so much, life had almost forced us into becoming more and more comfortable with ourselves. We weren’t reaching for much outside of the pure experience of self-expression, and simultaneously not necessarily settling either. We just found a uniqueness in simply existing.”
