CD: Cage the Elephant, Cage the Elephant

We probably wouldn't be hearing Cage the Elephant were it not for the arena-filling success of Kings of Leon over the past year. Like Kings of Leon, Cage the Elephant hail from the American south, feature brothers in the band, and play a bluesy take on alternarock. Someone somewhere doubtless saw the opportunity to make large sums of money from them. But there are more quirks here than on the Kings' ruthlessly efficient last album. For a start, one senses that Cage the Elephant spent a lot of time in their youths listening to rap metal: the tempos and especially the semi-rapped phrasing of Matt Shultz summon an age when white men in baggy shorts and baseball caps bestrode the planet. Don't let that put you off, though, for there's a Red Bull-powered Stooges lurking in here somewhere, and when Cage the Elephant can transfer their live power to record, they'll be unstoppable.