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Rating: The debut of Imagine Dragons follows and strengthens the trend of the period that sees, particularly in Great Britain, the explosion of the Synth Pop scene. However, they are from Las Vegas, home of The Killers, from whom they absorb not a few Indie influences, a mix that offers an excellent debut album, "Night Visions."
The opening is quite explosive, with the super single "Radioactive" leading the American Rock Charts for some time now, breaking several records, with a catchy beat and chorus that gave "Night Visions" the visibility needed to conquer large audiences.
Tracks like "Tiptoe" and "It's Time" bear New Wave influences, keyboards, and synthesizers. The rest is done by Dan Reynolds' voice, a singer with a passion for percussion, who, with a pleasant vocal timbre, also delivers Folk Rock dance tracks like the captivating "On Top Of The World," featured on the FIFA '13 video game soundtrack.The keyboards in "Demons" seem to accompany a poem, and as the listening continues, the album doesn't lose its mark. In fact, in tracks like "Amsterdam" and "Bleeding Out," original touches blend with engaging sounds and vocals, while "Hear Me," which nods to the aforementioned early The Killers, makes the latter seem now surpassed and signifies, in my opinion, a partial passing of the torch of the USA Indie scene, at least the commercial one.
Dubstep experiments are not lacking either - these are known to be fashionable - not exactly unforgettable, well compensated by tracks like "Nothing Left To Say/Rocks" and the closing track "Working Man."
Overall, this debut album's many positive notes cannot be understated, deserving all the international success matured after several years of studio work. It's also fair to say that behind the debut of the 'imaginary dragons' is the concrete hand of Interscope/Universal, which might suggest a ready-made and well-packaged dish to be delivered to Radio, Press, and TV, but even if that's the case, we couldn't care less, and the creative flair of the Nevada quartet remains unquestionable.
"Night Visions" brims with originality, rhythm, melodies, and charm from every pore, and establishes itself among the best releases of 2013 despite the usual mummies that dominate the scene far and wide.
In relation to the genre, I give it a 9 out of 10, not far from the fifth star out of 5.
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Other reviews
By splinter
"Night Visions is essentially an album oriented towards pop-rock and especially indie-rock soundscapes, which are quite in vogue nowadays."
"Production isn’t everything... in the end, the ideas are there, so the feedback is rather positive, and these tracks, with not-so-clear sound, still have their say."
