Music Review: Smoke and Mirrors

Three years after releasing their debut album, Night Visions, choc-full of megahits like “Radioactive” and “It’s Time,” Imagine Dragons has let loose Smoke + Mirrors. The title is apt—the band relies on effects, tricks and overused hooks and is lacking in true musical talent. Regardless, Smoke + Mirrors is an honest effort to keep up the momentum the band had built off their first album and surely contains an equally impressive round of hits.

Imagine Dragons is a rock band gone 21st century. They know their audience. Guitar ballads don’t sell like electronic head-thumpers these days, so they learned how to disguise the former with the latter, creating a modern stylistic collage that’s best described as a love child between stadium rock and EDM. This tactic makes them widely appealing but also somewhat limited—how long can they rely on the same formulas to generate their music? With Smoke + Mirrors, it would seem they intend to find out.

The first song on the album, “Shots,” is undeniably catchy, and even the most cynical listener will find it generates a head-bobbing groove. However, the sheer number of effects they use in the first 20 seconds of the track is overwhelming, jumping from tinny synth to auto-tuned vocals to distorted keyboards and back again. It starts to come together as the song builds, but it falls apart again when more parts are piled on, like a floor bass, a four chord guitar progression, vocals that are just a little too high and an un-placable, but curiously Middle Eastern-sounding, percussion instrument. The lyrics are trite and self-pitying (“I’m sorry for everything I’ve done…Oh I’m wishing you’re here/but I’m wishing you’re gone…Over and over and over again”). Mass-manufactured lyrics work with the manufactured sound, though, so, somehow, this doesn’t come off as grating as it might otherwise.

“Gold” follows, which similarly overwhelms with effects—but at least they tried a few new ones here. It incorporates rap and whistling over the band's usual chanting and gigantic drums, creating what is, at the very least, a compelling and unusual soundscape. With this track and others, like “Polaroid” and “Friction,” Imagine Dragons proves that they are still evolving and inventing themselves, which is exactly what many listeners are looking for on a sophomore album.

The title track, “Smoke and Mirrors,” is a brief respite from the bombastic anthems that Imagine Dragons relies on, but the lyrics are no less eyeroll-worthy. “All I believe/Is it a dream/that comes crashing down on me?/All that I hold/is it just smoke and mirrors?” What they lack in emotional depth, they make up for in pure catchiness, ensuring this album’s probable success.

They took genuine risks elsewhere, like “I’m So Sorry” and “Summer,” which keep the album interesting and prevent it from feeling like a mere continuation of Night Visions. Both of these tracks are a little truer to their rock-pop roots, and, even if they won’t be chart toppers, they give the album a cadence and direction it sorely needs. “I Bet My Life” is the opposite—a surefire hit that will be blasted from car windows and sung at the tops of lungs all over, capturing the essence of the most fun and successful tracks that made the band famous.

Smoke + Mirrors is neither perfect nor groundbreaking, but it does show commercial awareness of what amassed their listeners in the first place as well as a willingness to take some risks and evolve as a group. Thus, it is exactly what one would expect from Imagine Dragons, bringing a good time but nothing new or risky.