Grammy-winning Cage The Elephant announces Phoenix stop during North American tour

PHOENIX — Grammy Award-winning rock band Cage The Elephant announced a stop in Phoenix on its upcoming North American summer tour in conjunction with a new album.

“Neon Pill,” the band’s first album since 2019, is set to release on May 17, about one month before the tour kicks off on June 20 in Utah. The tour reaches Talking Stick Resort Amphitheatre (previously known as Ak-Chin Pavilion) in Phoenix on July 5, the 10th show in the 45-date tour.

Presales start Tuesday, and tickets go on sale to the general public Friday at 10 a.m. Young The Giant and Bakar will join Cage The Elephant for most of the tour, including the Phoenix stop.

Along with the tour announcement, the band released a new song “Out Loud,” which the band calls “the emotional centerpiece” of the new album. The album’s title track was released in January.

“To me, ‘Neon Pill’ is the first record where we were consistently uninfluenced, and I mean that in a positive way,” Cage The Elephant frontman Matthew Shultz said in the tour announcement. “We’ve always drawn inspiration from artists we love, and at times we’ve even emulated some of them to a certain degree. With this album, having gone through so much, life had almost forced us into becoming more and more comfortable with ourselves.”

Shultz, whose brother Brad plays guitar in the band, lost his dad during the first year of the pandemic, and the band also dealt with multiple deaths of friends. Shultz says these tribulations among others shaped the new song and album.

Cage The Elephant has been nominated for three Grammy awards and has won Best Rock Album twice for “Tell Me I’m Pretty” and most recently “Social Cues.”

Four of the band’s albums have reached the top 30 of the Billboard 200 list, led by “Thank You Happy Birthday,” which peaked at No. 2.

Cage the Elephant last performed in the Valley in July 2019 at Talking Stick Resort Amphitheatre, according to setlist.fm.

Follow @iamdamonallred