THE LAS VEGAS BORN POP ROCK QUARTET IMAGINE DRAGONS KICKED OFF SOLSTICE SEASON WITH A GLOSSY NEW ALBUM SWIMMING IN SUMMERTIME SHINE
BY DAN SALAMONE
There is something about Las Vegas the blinding lights, the tacky glamour, the non-stop performance of it all, and most importantly, the all-encompassing focus on dollar signs that only breeds mega-bands. Vegas doesn’t typically produce the artsy, pensive, soul-searching, intimate, and personal alchemy of artist. That’s what cities like Brooklyn, Seattle, Portland, Raleigh, and Austin are for. One doesn’t typically look to Vegas for painfully birthed, raw musical statements with no consideration for commerce or fame. You look for bands that are stadium-sized, practically from incep tion. You look for bands like Imagine Dragons.
Imagine Dragons sound like they sprung from the (metaphorical) womb fully formed. You don’t hear their difficult, awkward period in any of their music, if such a thing ever even existed. They came into the world via a debut album, 2008’s Night Visions, that sounds like the commercial apex of a band that had been already playing together for a dozen years. Their first major single, “Radioactive,” sounded like the perfect soundtrack for the sleekest, Michael Mann-directed sportscar ad that the world unfortunately never got. It was catchy and glossed to the diamond sheen of a million stage lights. It felt inevitable, like it was a mega-smash from the moment it first reached human ears. That whole album (which was among the 200 bestselling albums of nine different years between 2012 2020) sounded like that. For fans of that album, and of the five albums hence, I have wonderful news: you’re going to love Loom, too.
Released on June 28, the new album opens, appropriately enough, right with a shiny new single, “Wake Up.” The track, as with much of Loom, is very summery and pop-forward. The band’s sound in the past has always been towering, shouty jams with a heavy “your musical motivational speaker” vibe, but the first single is loose and even a bit goofy, sharing more than a few DNA strands with MC Hammer’s “Addams Family” soundtrack title song.
The album is full of pleasingly un-serious music, in fact. If you only want Imagine Dragons in their austere, self-important strain, you’re likely to be mildly disappointed. (Don’t worry, lovers of that flavor of ID. That version of the band does show up on ballads “Don’t Forget Me,” “Eyes Closed,” and the chunky, Reggaeton-adjacent “Gods Don’t Pray.”)
The second song (and another obvious single), “Nice to Meet You,” is about as bouncy and fun as Imagine Dragons has ever sounded. Sampling what appears to be Art of Noise’s 1985 classic “Moments in Love,” it’s light, lithe, and blissfully tight, as if it could float away with the summer wind. It’s so joyous and breezy that, despite its very au courant production, it’s also the closest thing to timeless that an Imagine Dragons song has ever sounded. Ditto, but to a lesser extent, is the appropriately titled “Take Me to the Beach.” Reminiscent of an enjoyable mash-up of Sublime and Backstreet Boys, it’s another album track that impresses with its light touch and under-three-minute running time. (Don’t worry, traditional ID zealots: it’s still tresshouty.)
Loom is the lone Imagine Dragons record that one can point to as proof the band can change and progress, albeit in very subtle, limited ways. You can hear this positive tension not just across the album, but within certain tracks. “In Your Corner” and “Kid” (the latter taking a lot from “Feel Good Inc.” by the Gorillaz) have the effervescent beats that suggest a departure in sound, but also none-more-serious electronic atmospherics, lyrics, and roaring vocals that let the band keep one foot firmly on the same soil they’ve fruitfully tilled for so many years.
That’s Imagine Dragons’ Loom in a nutshell: the conflict between the band as uber-confident, world-conquering boys and the older, wiser, looser men who want to slip off the superhero outfits for a change and just breathe in, kick off their shoes, and take in the majesty of the world around.
Imagine Dragons