He wants so badly to travel the righteous path, and his soul may one day bask in the glow of eternal wisdom. “I’ve told a million lies, but now I’ll tell a single truth,” Reynolds sings on “I Bet My Life,” a gospel-sampling, foot-stomping anthem that serves as the album’s 72-ounce Big Gulp of arms-aloft hope-folk. And all those attempts at musical worldliness can feel like stylistic tourism.
The combination of self-pity, grandiosity and leaden spirituality can get trying. On the title track, Edge-y guitars shimmer and strings slam as he entreats “I wanna believe” to an unspecified “dream-maker/life-taker.”
Imagine dragons album cover smoke and mirrors full#
He never goes Full Jesus, but spiritual overtones come through all over the place as he lunges through the darkness in search of redemption. Reynolds’ background as a practicing Mormon plays a big role in his music. “It Comes Back to You” has a pleasantly skipping tune with a Talking Heads guitar line that suggests sunny vibes - but nope: Instead he finds himself pondering “all the things that I could be/I think I learned in therapy.” “Who can you trust when everything you touch turns to gold?” he sings over the glowering synths and grim drums of “Gold,” sounding a little like Drake’s pale shadow. The success of Night Visions abruptly took Imagine Dragons from 150-capacity clubs and casinos to arenas and an explosive performance with Kendrick Lamar at the 2014 Grammys. Success hasn’t done much to pick up his afflicted mood. Smoke + Mirrors is the follow-up to their multiplatinum 2012 hit album, Night Visions. There are moments of lithe prettiness like “Summer” and descents into desolation like the goth slog “Dream.” There’s even straight-up rock on the Black Keys-indebted garage-blues grinder “I’m So Sorry.”Īll this finds a focal point in singer Dan Reynolds, a 27-year-old family man with a sad, stout heart the size of Utah. Throughout the album, the genre mash-ups come fast and furious - from the New Wave-tinged dance-rock of “Shots” to “Friction,” a whirl of Eastern strings, art-metal yammering, R&B Auto-Tune and electronic knock-hockey. Like Night Visions, it’s overseen by producer Alex Da Kid, who usually works with stars like Rihanna and Nicki Minaj. Smoke + Mirrors builds on its predecessor’s multifaceted bombast. Every time a Dragon bangs a floor tom, a member of Nickelback sheds a tear.īut being mildly inventive isn’t the same as being good, and Imagine Dragons hone all that eclectic energy into dreary anthems that aren’t much better than the flaming turds Creed used to light up on our collective doorstep back in the Nineties. Overview: The Bravado Imagine Dragons Smoke Mirrors Fiber with Wood Texture 13 x 17 Inch Framed Poster shows the album art from the album Smoke + Mirrors.
In concert, they hammered away at massive drums, an annoying theatrical gambit that might be a portent of where mainstream “rock” is heading. Their biggest hit, “Radioactive,” was a dour moaner that sounded like Chris Martin trying to write an Eminem ballad about the end of the world. On their multiplatinum 2012 debut, Night Visions, the Las Vegas act found a way to reheat old-fashioned arena-rock catharsis for the segmented pop world of the 2010s - fusing Coldplay’s heart-hugging balladry, Arcade Fire’s darkly heroic surge, neon Killers synths and elements of hip-hop, folk and EDM into something new. Let’s give Imagine Dragons credit where it’s due.
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