Imagine Dragons
Loom

Imagine Dragons seemed to have gotten onto a good track, that of maturity, with the first "Mercury", they really had us fooled, while the second chapter already partly made us regret it, alternating very good and classy songs with crazy commercial stuff; yet in the end it wasn't even bad, those commercial tracks, on second thought, were in a certain sense forgivable, not too evil… I criticized them because I hadn't seen (or rather, I couldn't see) what would come next…

The next is called "Loom" and it is, this time yes, an absurd commercial move, the most absurd ever produced by the much-debated group from Las Vegas. From the beginning I have always been critical of them, I have always had something to say about their style because it's too flat, too wasted, because it doesn't give value to sounds and arrangements; but here they really hit rock bottom, there's very little musical about it, if it perhaps seemed that they could save themselves from the drift here they have definitively been sucked in, and who could ever pull them out now?!

Screamed songs, overblown choruses, speaker-breaking anthems, instruments that are barely audible, they have practically blindly followed the paradigm of today's commercial "music", if before they at least tried to elevate themselves just enough, not here. They really don't seem to want to do things right… as long as they sell a lot, the girls flash at the concerts, who cares about everything else... Not even when there could be some potential or a good idea do they strive to make it sound good, for example, in that sort of reggae-videogame track "Gods Don’t Pray". They maybe tried to be serious with "In Your Corner", where they made some string arrangements appear as if to say <>. In terms of well-constructed melodies, we can save the more laid-back "Don’t Forget Me" and "Fire in These Hills", but it's still too little.

The good thing is that, almost aware of the fact that it could be an ordeal for many ears, they don't drag it out too long and stop the clock at just 28 minutes.

Any hope placed on Imagine Dragons could end here, although I might still listen to what comes next, a bit out of tradition, a bit because there remains that flicker of hope. But, for heaven's sake, no comparison with Coldplay, those guys in being pop have always maintained a certain sonic dignity and have even offered a series of artistic gems not really for everyone.