Live Review: Cage The Elephant - O2 Victoria Warehouse, Manchester 19/02/2020
In support of their 2019 Grammy award winning album, Social Cues, Cage The Elephant made their return to Manchester, this time playing one of the cities biggest venues.
Support came from Post Animal and SWMRS, two fellow American bands that fans had made the effort to come down early for, and rightly so, as they set up the crowd ready for the evening ahead.
With the stage set up on par with arena standard, tube lights and a tiered stage allowed half of the band to play high up. Surrounded by smoke in the background, they had room to do their thing without the chaotic energy of singer Matt Shultz overshadowing their talents. Because have you ever seen a man with more energy than Matt Shultz, really?
We were promised fire, we were promised confetti cannons and Cage The Elephant delivered. Kicking off with new album opener ‘Broken Boy’, the band ran through their back catalogue of iconic singles. ‘Spiderhead’, ‘Cold Cold Cold’, ‘Mess Around’ and lead single on Social Cues ‘Ready to Let Go’ were early highlights.
Matt Shultz didn’t stop moving, dancing, literally bending in unimaginable ways, until 10 songs in, half an hour of non-stop grooving, whilst singing, how does he do it? ‘Trouble’ allowed for a well deserved breather for both the crowd and the band. The crowd were given an opportunity to lift their phone cameras in admiration without constantly jumping around, whilst the slower song allowed the band to compose themselves.
New songs were seamlessly mixed with the songs from the Cage The Elephant that we fell in love with all those years ago, the balance was perfect. Seemingly coming to the end, ‘Come a Little Closer’, ‘Shake Me Down’, ‘Cigarette Daydreams’ and ‘Teeth’, brought more excitement. This run of songs would have made for the ideal ending, but there was still time for an encore.
This came with a long wait. Now don’t get me wrong I am a huge fan of the band, but the encore was an odd choice. The show was chaotic, it was loud, it was powerful, but the encore didn’t replicate the energy of the show. ‘Love’s The Only Way’ and ‘Goodbye’ were played whilst most of the band had already finished for the night, it was like a late night karaoke, the energy had run out and a lot of the crowd were slowly dispersing before the end of the show. I love these songs on record, they’re beautiful and present true emotions, but this encore was a huge anti-climax from the show we were watching 15 minutes ago.
Cage the Elephant are an example of a band who have had huge success, but aren’t quite the large scale arena band they deserve to be. Five albums later they’ve got the back catalogue, the energy and the world-wide fan base to prove they are one of the best bands around.
Words and photography by Abbie Jennings