Stylistically, the singer tries on enough hats to differentiate Origins’ collection of music from the more homogenous Evolve, in particular, the Bleachers-meets-Coldplay pop of single “Zero,” a nod to soul music on “Cool Out,” and the “ Wake Me Up”-core country textures of “West Coast.”īut with its tired aphorisms and eerily familiar sonic environments, it never adds up to be much of a comment on the music Imagine Dragons is referencing. Reynolds, though, uses that tension to increasingly hollow effect. The anthems-“Natural,” “Bad Liar,” “Machine”-lean heavily on the trusty loud-quiet-loud dynamic that buoyed the bands’ past hits. The music is categorically soaring and sometimes pleasant, because sometimes the algorithm finds you where you want to be found. Reynolds feels compelled to turn his attention to this modern life, outlining his grievances in language that feels almost too accessible: “How many artists fear the light? Fear the pain, go insane?” he asks on “Bullet in a Gun.” On closer “Real Life” he ponders, “Hey, turn your phone off, won’t you look me in my eye?/Can we live that real life?” Do we live in a society? Imagine Dragons are almost positive we do.

On their new album, Origins, Reynolds finds himself on the other side of the personal darkness that shaded Evolve, emerging with a more positive outlook, a world-weary curiosity now turned outward. They make low-hanging-fruit music, which can be great in theory, but because of all the styles it stitches together, their songs something more distant and mutated. Since Imagine Dragons scaled to a mass audience so quickly, their songs have had to stay just as huge. It had the inescapable “Thunder,” a song that bored itself deep into the collective consciousness thanks in part to a mind-numbingly catchy chorus and ubiquitous Microsoft and Jeep ads. Their third album, 2017’s Evolve, sold 147,000 copies in its first week, an incredible amount in the streaming era. After the breakout success of “Radioactive,” Imagine Dragons’ sophomore record, Smoke + Mirrors, topped the Billboard chart in its first week. How did Imagine Dragons become so huge despite the fact that the average American couldn’t pick out a single Dragon in a lineup? Their sound is kind of like the machine learning output of the Lumineers, the Chainsmokers, and a SoulCycle playlist. They turned down their guitars and turned up every expensive synth pad known to man, and exactly one collaboration with Kendrick Lamar later, they were one of the biggest new rock bands in the country. Their breakthrough hit, “ Radioactive,” stayed on the Hot 100 chart for a record-setting 87 weeks. The rise of the Las Vegas rock band in 2013 coincided with the lull in the format’s popularity, yet, remarkably, they were a runaway success. Imagine Dragons have become a case study for rock music fading out of the zeitgeist.

Imagine dragons album smoke and mirrors