Although I have long enjoyed the music from Imagine Dragons [1], it was released at a time when I was not buying any albums, and so it is not one that I have had the chance to properly review. As it happened, the subject happened to come up when I was spending some time recently with one of my friends, and I was loaned the album to listen to and review, so now I have the chance to listen at greater leisure to the album as a whole rather than listen to the familiar singles that dominated the music charts for more than two years as the album made its way to double-platinum sales. Now for the track-by-track review:
Radioactive: The second hit single off this track in the United States, this song starts the album out with an unusual kind of feeling, a longing for freedom, concern about contagion and decay, and a desire to fit in even if that means being mistaken as more revolutionary than one is. As an alternative band with clear pop-rock leanings, that is an understandable approach to take, and it is of little surprise that the track was a multi-format smash as a result of successfully appealing to a diverse group of audiences with a thoughtful and surprisingly deep song.
Tiptoe: The first obvious album track on the album, which for the most part has a classic album structure front-loaded with obvious (and in the case of this album, spectacularly successful) singles, this is a pleasant synth-pop track which has music that would not be out of place on one of my beloved Britpop albums by someone like Coldplay. It is subdued, a lot like a tiptoe in fact, but no less pleasant for all that.
It’s Time: The first hit single of the band, this song is marked by its mandolin instrumental track, which gives the song a bit of a folk sense. To be sure, the rest of the album is melodic, but the mandolin is a nice touch, especially given that the song is explicitly about a city that never sleeps, which means that the folk touches are a layer of irony that is a direct reference to the sort of urban folk-rock that one finds from bands like the Lumineers and Mumford and Sons. That sort of irony makes a beautiful song even more beautiful.
Demons: The third massive single from the band, this song is a melancholy and reflective track that reflects upon themes of salvation and its opposite, and the concern that wanting what is best for someone else in light of one’s own concerns about being a bad influence often involves feeling a great deal of suffering. As a song about the ambivalence between longing for intimacy and simultaneously fearing being too close, it is a heart-wrenching track.
On Top Of The World: The fourth-biggest hit single on an album that had hit after hit, this song is a direct contrast to the previous one, showing a feeling of being on top of the world. It is a strange feeling, to be sure, and when one looks at the overall context of the album, this upbeat song contrasts with most of the album, which has a tendency towards the sardonic, or the dark. Nevertheless, at the very least out of a sense of balance, this is an enjoyable and peppy song, and a worthy hit.
Amsterdam: This is another song that would not appear out of place on a Keane or Coldplay album, for the most part, and the use of synth as a way of helping to form the texture of the song is effective. Although it cannot be judged as being very original to name a song after the city of Amsterdam, as Coldplay and Guster [3] have done it, and likely many others, this is a pleasant album track and an enjoyable song to listen to, even if it is a song about patience and apologies.
Hear Me: This song is a moving and somewhat gloomy ode to not feeling as if someone is understanding what one is saying, that communication is going poorly despite continual effort. Given the frequency of complaints people, especially creative and compulsively communicative people like writers and musicians, have about such matters, it appears as if this is a frequent area of difficulty, and the fact that it was as a minor hit as an album track suggests that its message caught on with plenty of other people as well.
Every Night: This song shows another strong contrast with the number before it, showing a sense of devotion and loyalty to a partner, or at the very least to one’s family, by expressing a desire to come home. This is a worthwhile album track that is pleasant to listen to, but at times it seems a bit cliched, and somewhat ambivalent in its lack of confidence in a positive outcome of going home.
Bleeding Out: This is one of the darkest songs on the album, and meditates broodingly on the issue of sacrifice for a relationship, to the extent of bleeding out for someone else. The song was a minor hit on the rock charts, and expresses a rather serious level of devotion for someone else. The song is a bit repetitive, but it is a compelling album track nonetheless.
Underdog: This song is one of my favorite album tracks here, with an upbeat if somewhat sardonic attitude about being an underdog and having bad luck and getting the short end of the stick. One gets the feeling that the narrator does not truly enjoy being the underdog, although there is likely some satisfaction in proving other people wrong that I can certainly identify with personally.
Nothing Left To Say: This song, like a few songs on the album, ruminates on the problem of communication, ending up going on for about six and a half minutes, a couple minutes or so of which is a pleasant droning ending of unfulfilled longing like Semisonic’s “I Wish” or Eric Clapton’s “Layla.” Just as an earlier track on this album had talked about bleeding out, this song gives the feeling of being written out and talked out and struggling to find something new and worthwhile to say to resolve the problems in a relationship.
Rocks (Bonus Track): This hidden track is the sort of song that one imagines many bands at least thinking of, concerning its central motif of throwing rocks up at someone’s window in order to get their attention. In many ways, those who create in writing and music material are choosing a more elegant, if often no more successful, way of getting the attention of others.
Overall, this is a satisfying pop-rock album. It has a handful of really great tracks, and even the ordinary album tracks are solid. At a little under 45 minutes, this is an album that manages to avoid having dead weight, and it is likely an album that will age well, being the sort of material that serves as a fitting time capsule for the early 2010’s. This album is as accomplished as the debut album of Foreigner [2] and deals with many of the same concerns about relationships and the trouble of communication, as well as the stylistic variety included in these tracks. An album this good augurs well for a bright future full of producing good music, so long as the band can keep writing solid material and including those little touches that make each track distinctive.
[1] See, for example:
https://edgeinducedcohesion.wordpress.com/2013/07/20/its-where-my-demons-hide/
https://edgeinducedcohesion.wordpress.com/2013/12/07/i-love-to-be-the-underdog/
[2] See, for example:
https://edgeinducedcohesion.wordpress.com/2015/09/25/album-review-foreigner/
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