HEAR YE DRAGONS
Imagine Dragons sold 3-million copies of their debut album, proving the enduring mass appeal of safe stadium rock. But Yolisa Mkele found some redeeming shadows of doubt in the American band — who dropped their harder, darker second album, Smoke and Mirro
LAS Vegas is a city of caricatures. A desert metropolis stitched together by lights, gaudy hotels and a tourist horde looking to gorge itself on sin. It stands in the wilderness, posing for the surrounding cacti, sand and mountains, craving adulation and receiving it from the millions flocking to its silicon bosom.
In a sense, the city echoes the modus operandi of modern mainstream popular music. On the surface, the industry’s stars are little more than mass-produced singing dolls, woven by marketing seamstresses and fuelled by the manufactured roar of a radio-friendly crowd. They often seem like cartoon versions of the rock and pop giants of old, but try to sell themselves as authentic, au naturel.
Walking into a suite at the Hard Rock Hotel in Las Vegas, I cannot help but wonder whether “indie rock” mega-group Imagine Dragons will try to sell me the truth or something candy-coated.
Their 2012 debut album Night Visions was massively successful. It sold more than 3-million copies, led to a world tour and earned the band a string of awards, including a Grammy. Sadly, it was also a triumph of the colour beige. While good, it never really plumbed the depths of the band’s lyrical and instrumental talent. Instead, it cloaked itself in musical safety, making it just edgy enough for cool kids to listen to while mom approvingly hummed along in the car.
In their defence, Night Visions was the band’s first major assault on the broader public’s ears and its lead single, Radioactive , which was decidedly less cloying than other songs on the album, was a sign of bolder and better things to come.
“Our favourite artists growing up were always the artists that were trying new things and pushing the boundaries of what they were. For me, Smoke and Mirrors is not a departure, it is an expansion of the world of Imagine Dragons,” says the band’s lead singer, Dan Reynolds.
With Smoke and Mirrors, the band take a marked step away from their previous endeavours. Not only is it heavier musically but it also feels more personal. Gold, one of the singles from the new album, sounds like King Kong lumbering through a field of drum kits and has Reynolds rasping, “First comes the blessing of all that you’ve dreamed/But then comes the curses of diamonds and rings/Only at first did it have its appeal but now you can’t tell the false from the real”.
Reynolds has battled a bit with fame. Initially reserved and a little taciturn, he looks like the kind of guy Adrien Brody could play in a biopic. Clad in an untucked blue shirt and a black trench coat with the collar pulled up, he cuts the figure of a man oppressed by his success and made distrustful by it.
“It’s a really weird thing,” he says. “Everyone has their own thoughts on what happens when fame happens but no matter what you think it is, it is always different. It is not just that the things around you change, it’s also that your perception of the things around you changes. If my best buddy, whom I’ve been friends with for 10 years, laughs at a joke, I now find myself wondering if he was laughing at it because of the band’s success or if he genuinely found it funny.”
Other songs, like Friction and I Bet My Life, take this darker turn of mind and run with it to glorious effect. Friction is like listening to the sound of 1 000 livid bees chase your ex into quicksand. I Bet My Life is an angsty, folk-flavoured dip into alienation.
“On tour I was able to use music as my therapy. I believe that I really tried to go to those places and it became easy because those were the places I was in. There were times when I was depressed as all hell overseas in some hotel room at 2am and writing really helped me get through that,” says Reynolds.
“[Writing Smoke and Mirrors] was such a wild time in my life with the highest highs and the lowest lows. The adrenaline … and having a new kid while I was on the road was so much. I was also struggling with fame and it all really took a mental toll on me. Suddenly you’re judging everything that happens in your life a particular way because of the success of the band. I haven’t quite figured it out but it is difficult because it makes relationships harder to have,” says Reynolds.
The band were born and bred in Vegas, so it’s not hard to see how their first album came out with a little bit more gloss than substance. Their home town exudes a certain eau de Montecasino. From Caesar’s palace to the faux hot-air balloon dubbed “Paris”, everything screams “Look at me!” but nothing says why the hell you should. At first glance, Vegas is a giant playpen for grown-ups. It is only as you leave the strip that you realise that here be dragons.
It took a two-year world tour that included 130 headline shows and 50 festivals to ignite the gastrointestinal flame the band had lacked. “This record was written while we were touring and playing in different venues around the world to different audiences, which really opened our eyes to a lot of musical possibilities we had never considered before,” says drummer Daniel Platzman.
The excitement generated by Night Visions meant it soon became time for the band to pack up and leave the luminous streets of Las Vegas, armed with little more than one album, a handful of hits and a few EPs to fill their sets. As any concert-goer will attest, there is a certain awkwardness when a band play for a crowd that only know the three singles on the album.
“It was tricky but we’ve spent a lot of time together as a band and learnt to improvise through a lot of situations together. So when we started becoming more familiar and comfortable with the music, we started expanding on it as well. We added more interludes between songs, more guitar solos and more drum breakdowns to keep the music interesting for us and the fans,” says bassist Ben McKee.
“It seemed like we’d toured forever on one album. We played songs from our EPs too and threw in stuff that made things interesting for us, like covers,” adds Platzman.
Touring globally without a big back catalogue to draw on has become a necessary evil. Streaming websites like Spotify, Soundcloud and Bandcamp have meant the slow and grinding decline of record sales. Unlike Taylor Swift, who famously removed all of her content from Spotify days before launching one of the fastest-selling albums in history, Imagine Dragons do not want to fight the future.
“The music industry has really changed a lot over the past couple of decades and this is the beginning of a new era of music. An artist can’t just release a song, sit back and make income from royalties. You have to look at your recorded music as something that is going to bring people out to your live shows, which is where artists make most of their money now. It is also driving
’If my best buddy laughs at a joke, I find myself wondering if he really found it funny’ Vegas exudes a certain eau de Montecasino. Everything screams ’Look at me!’
older artists back onto the touring circuit,” says McKee. “It’s a shift and I don’t think we’ve reached a balance yet. There could be a better job done of monitoring the way music is streamed and of reimbursing artists for their work more fairly but I think it’s foolish to think you can try pushing music back in the other direction by taking your music off of streaming.”
Says guitarist Wayne Sermon: “I don’t want to get like a penny for every 1 000 streams. That is not ideal for an artist but it will get there.”
This fresh outlook even finds a visual outlet in the album’s artwork. Designed by painter and graphic artist Tim Cantor, the album cover and accompanying art are menacingly gorgeous. Each picture — there’s one for every song — carries the atmosphere of a pre- or post-apocalyptic scene; the unhurried settling of ashes after the conclusion of World War 3.
“When you first look at [Cantor’s] art, you think, ‘Oh, that’s kind of dark,’ but the more you look at it the more beautiful and uplifting it is, in a way. I think a lot of the album is the same,” says Sermon.
A kind of hard warmth glares out from each of the images, reflecting the theme of the song with which it has been paired.
“The longer you’re an artist, the more important it is to go to those places that you don’t really want to go to because they create the greatest art,” says Reynolds. “There were a few songs I was shy to show to the guys because I was so vulnerable and now the whole world is going to hear them. I can’t really think about it because it makes me very timid, but I know it was the right step to take as a band because those are the songs that form a real part of Imagine Dragons.”
Perched 12 floors above the earth, sitting across from one of the biggest bands in the world, listening to their lead singer talk about his everyday struggles, I have a single word running through my mind: looming. All four black-clad band members roost on a single white couch, like crows on a mound of leather snow. They are not menacing but project an awareness of their surroundings that extends beyond music.
Inexorably, I end up mouthing a question about the recent killing of an unarmed black teenager in Ferguson, Missouri, hoping their handler does not burst in through the door and order me out. “It’s sad that it takes tragedy to create a space for these conversations to happen but unfortunately that is just how the world works — and how it has always worked,” comments Reynolds.
“There is a lot to be learnt on both sides and I think that it is good for people to have these conversations.”
Says Sermon: “I think we realise that maybe we’re a little further from our goal than we thought we were but I love this country and I think we are going to get it right.”
With that, my time runs out and my purpose in Vegas is extinguished. Sermon’s final words — “we are going to get it right”— drift through my brain as I waft back to my hotel room.
With Night Visions, they did not get it right — or rather, they got the wrong thing right.
It was seemingly an album crafted with the audience in mind rather than the music.
While such albums will always be popular, they seldom become greats. With Smoke and Mirrors, Imagine Dragons are taking a positive step towards greatness.
They have not entirely shorn the syrupy pop touch from their recipe, but they’re certainly no longer governed by it — and the result is a beautiful, dark, twisted fantasy. LS
The writer was a guest of Universal Music.
All four black-clad members roost on a white couch, like crows on a mound of leather snow