Tell Me I'm Pretty

I saw on social media a while back someone stating that rock was dead. This person clearly doesn't investigate enough, as there is still a lot of good rock out there if you look for it. You just have to look for it. The Grammy for Best Rock Album went to Cage the Elephant's Tell Me I'm Pretty, and I'm glad to say that it's good rock and roll.

I'm also glad to say that Cage the Elephant's stuff can be classified as garage rock. Looking through the credits, I see no mention of synthesizers. And singer Matt Shultz styles himself after Iggy Pop, so there's no auto-tune.

There are ten songs on Tell Me I'm Pretty and none of them are clunkers. They are all chugging, drive forward gems--no seven-minute epics, no slow love ballads. Relationships between men and the women they love are the subject of many of the songs, though. The best line on the record that made me laugh every time I heard it is from the closing track, "Portuguese Knife Fight": "I want to waste my life with you." What girl could resist that?

My favorite songs are "Cold Cold Cold," which has some excellent drum work by Jared Champion, "That's Right," which sounds a bit like a circus band, and "Too Late to Say Goodbye," which if you didn't tell me I could guess was released in 1966.

The album was produced by Daniel Auerbach of the Black Keys, and if you've read my reviews of them you know that's a positive thing.

About their name: I'd heard of Cage the Elephant, and always assumed "Cage" was a noun, like it was an elephant named Cage. But no, they got the name from a random lunatic who was screaming, "You must cage the elephant!" So it's a verb. Makes more sense.