Imagine a dynamic where you get lost seemingly forever in its peaks and valleys. Imagine if Coldplay took off their skirts and grew a pair. Imagine a sound so profoundly addicting you’ll find it hard to sleep because the hooks and lyrics are imbedded so deeply into your mind. Imagine Dragons.
Combining the lyrical delivery of fellow Vegas rocker Brandon Flowers with Chris Martin’s attention to vocal detail, Imagine Dragons had scratched the surface of mainstream with the release of their Continued Silence EP. I say scratched the surface because yes the hugely successful “Radioactive” and “It’s Time” were on the EP, but I simply don’t want to acknowledge their profound entrance onto the musical scene through simply an EP; or basically, because you haven’t seen anything yet.
Taking all tracks except “Round and Round” and “My Fault,” Dan Reynolds, D. Wayne Sermon, Ben McKee and Daniel “Z” Platzman expanded on their early 2012 EP to make the eleven track Night Visions.
The record singlehandedly challenges the complacency found in the modern indie/rock movement and pushes their talents to every corner of possibilities. Now most are familiar with “It’s Time” and “Radioactive,” the tracks have been everywhere, from the backdrop to NBC commercials aired during the Olympics to FIFA 2013. Granted they are stellar songs in their own right, I was looking for much more from Night Visions as a whole. What I got was far greater than I could have imagined. “Demons,” previously released on Continued Silence, carries the nods to Coldplay-like vocals held within an epic range of poetic delivery, proving that a voice like that can still be appreciated. Deeper tracks like “Amsterdam” and “Hear Me” solidify my belief that pretty much every track could be an instant success as a single.
Imagine Dragons will have you turning your living room, or anywhere you are when you hit play, into a dance floor. They are the band that has the ability to make everyone look up from their smartphones and notice the world around them. As a call to arm to get up and be passionate about something, their infectious optimism pours out over eleven tracks of electro-indie-rock. They have an innate ability to draw your attention into every level of their music, consuming you with their refreshingly original sound. On the whole, no two songs are identical, particularly in instrumentals and vocals, each is a stark original sound that only compliments the monumental construction that is Night Visions.