If you like mind-bending statistics, then Imagine Dragons are very much the band for you. Their EDM-infused 2012 saga of apocalyptic dread, Radioactive, is the longest-running single in the history of the Billboard charts: 87 weeks on the Top 100. They are the most-streamed rock band in the world, with 37.5m monthly listeners on Spotify: stitch that, Coldplay, with your paltry 27.5m. Their debut album, Night Visions, spent five years on the US charts, the kind of success that enabled people to call its follow-up, Smoke & Mirrors, “commercially underwhelming” because it only sold 1m copies in the US. Normal service was resumed with 2017’s Evolve, enticingly described by the band’s lead singer Dan Reynolds, in true caution-to-the-wind, motormouthed style, as “a more palatable album for this generation and this time period”. It spawned the singles Believer and Thunder, collectively streamed 1.6bn times.
They have achieved all this while maintaining an almost enviable degree of anonymity. Theirs is not a success founded on a striking image, ineffable charisma or brain-searing visual branding. Nevertheless, the scale of their commercial triumphs has clearly left its mark, not least in the degree of portent with which they now describe their work. There’s none of your “more palatable album for this time period” in regard to Evolve’s successor, Origins. “When we create, we create with no boundaries, no rules,” Reynolds said in explanation of its contents. “We find it thrilling to make music that feels different and new to us.”
Listeners suitably primed for a boundary-breaking shift from the hook-laden, electronic pop-rock that has so far fuelled Imagine Dragons’ oeuvre should perhaps note that the band’s first stop on its journey to new ground was to assemble a collection of producers and co-songwriters noted for their work with avant-garde mavericks including Sam Smith, Cheryl Tweedy, Selena Gomez and fearsome electro-acoustic auteur Ellie Goulding. Notice is thus served that talk of creation without rules and music of a thrilling newness might amount to gilding the lily a bit.
And so it proves. The song Digital unexpectedly makes use of a drum’n’bass breakbeat, but for the most part, Origins’ contents arrive thickly spread with chart cliches: reverb-heavy xx-inspired guitars, the kind of high-pitched vocal echoes found on Justin Bieber’s Sorry, a bit of thumpy Mumford-ish folk on West Coast, a track that deals in taut 80s movie soundtrack pop-rock. The songs are well crafted – the title track in particular has a wonderfully turned chorus – but the band’s work frequently sounds weirdly interchangeable with other artists who occupy the Top 40. You can easily imagine Cool Out being performed by DNCE or Maroon 5, or Stuck being given a gruff-voiced makeover by George Ezra.
What individual character it has comes from an occasional desire to graft on well-worn stadium rock tropes: the pained intensity of Reynolds’ vocals, the rhythm of Machine that mimics the thump-thump-crash of Queen’s We Will Rock You, the yearning, U2-ish breakdown that appears midway through Zero. The lyrics deal in windy generalities – “Why can’t you just be my brother? Why do we have to kill one another?” – or stuff that fancies itself as profound but doesn’t make any sense: “I want a new world without the order / I want to resurrect and live a little shorter.”
Occasionally, the lyrics delve into what Bullet in a Gun – a melding of electronic rhythm track and Kings of Leon impersonation – refers to as “the Devil’s deal” of fame, a curious topic for a band who appear to have ascended to the upper echelons of commercial success with the minimum of angst. “To make a name, you pay the price,” cries Reynolds, sounding positively wracked. “How many artists fear the light? Feel the pain?” He then starts shouting “SELL OUT! SELL OUT!”, something that is hard to listen to without thinking: keep your hair on, mate, you weren’t exactly Napalm Death to start off with.
Perhaps it all hints at a gulf between how Imagine Dragons see themselves – fearless sonic explorers and sociopolitical philosophers straining at the very confines of commerciality – and what they are: a band who’ve hit on a winning formula, where mainstream pop music is larded with just enough references to classic rock to lure in not just lovers of the Top 40, but the kind of people who normally sniff at mainstream pop. If they really are troubled by their success or how they’re perceived, their dark night of the soul looks set to continue apace: cliches, cod profundities and all, Origins sounds like another vast hit.
This week Alexis listened to
Mighty Mouse: The Spirit
Fantastic bootleg house re-edit of Patti Labelle’s The Spirit’s in It, now apparently legally cleared and released by Glitterbox as a party-starting anthem in its own right.
