The new studio album from Imagine Dragons is here, two years since their last and five from their smash hit debut Night Visions; but have the band truly managed to Evolve?
If you’re not sure if you’ve actually heard Imagine Dragons, I’ll let you know straight away, you’ve definitely heard Imagine Dragons. Unless you were living in a bunker for 2012, you heard Radioactive as it carried across the world on the back of the Olympics. An inspiring pop-rock hit that perfectly set the tone for greatness and achievement whether you were the band that performed it, or the athletes it became the soundtrack for. Prior to their runaway success in 2012 when Night Visions went truly global, the band had formed as the members were still in university in 2008. Several years later they’d be asked to fill in for the legends of American Pop-Rock, Train and play to 26,000 people, the rest they say is history. Being a saturated market already, have the band managed to release something on par with their first true album?
I Don’t Know Why is the opening track of the album. Ominous EDM leads us in but is interestingly layered with a shouted and gravelly rock voice. Despite an interesting lead in however, the song retains a dull drum machine led rhythm throughout and the electronic melody thrown together with a more rock-based set of vocals gets boring quickly. It’s a far cry musically from their first album, which although polished was at least closer to their pop-rock roots. Thunder, tucked away at the end of the album takes the same EDM influence with the very #ontrend method of sampling different vocal pitches across the main vocalist, to limited effect. The second track, Whatever It Takes is still no standout track but at least brings some guitar back into the mix and inserts some well-mixed vocal harmonies from the rest of the band, from canon vocals to simply accompanying the melody of the chorus. The feeling from behind the song feels very much like their runaway hit single, Radioactive. It’s just a shame there’s no huge sporting event to latch onto this year for them.
Evolve is the third studio album by American rock band Imagine Dragons
By track three in the album you’d be hoping for something to keep interest by now, thankfully Believer is on hand to supply the song needed. The song is carried on a pounding bassline structured with percussive claps throughout the intro and chorus whilst a staccato, picked set of chords on a very understated guitar complement the song melodically whilst powerfully shouted and sometimes spoken word lyrics carry us through, structurally it’s more interesting and overall provides the energy you’d expect from a pop-rock band. Unfortunately, Rise Up, which comes later in the album tries the same formula for success but is not met with it, everything’s there in the recipe for a good song, but it feels a little half-baked.
Walking The Wire provides us with the lighter-waving (or smartphone waving these days) arena hit on the album. The track tells the story of a relationship with an overwhelmingly positive vibe. The song has keyboard and guitar plucked, played and strummed over gentle vocals whilst the chorus is led with simplistic drums and reverbed vocals that seem to contribute to the slight echo from a stadium. Following on the same vein of relationships, albeit not the same level of positivity at all is I’ll make it up to you. Don’t be fooled by the upbeat nature of the bassline, the message is more sinister. It’s simple enough in its essence, a boyfriend/partner needs to apologise and ‘make it up to’ his other half. However, with lyrics such as ‘the vices that follow a man’ it can’t help but feel sexist and not actually apologetic; for a band with a fan-base younger than many. It doesn’t feel healthy when hidden in the positive melody of this song, and brings a sense of unease.
As the album comes to a close, a problem with actually recognising Imagine Dragons in the sea of similar artists starts to become more apparent. In Start Over, the penultimate track of the album, simplistic vocals are plastered over a basic ‘tribal’ beat and sampled ‘tribal’ fills, similar to what you’d find on a Justin Bieber or Ariana Grande track. In honesty it’s hard to see what it brings to the music other than standing out like a badge of a producer who knows that it’s currently popular to have a track containing this. Whilst they may not have been the most unique band to grace the earth when they first debuted, at least the band retained a sense of identity. Unfortunately across this album, they seem to have lost their way and lost a portion of themselves in the process. The album is far from bad, and isn’t a chore to listen to, it’s even likely to chart well and still keep their fans. What we are left with however is more a sense of wondering what the band maybe could’ve been.
Author: Steve, Southgate store
