Imagine Dragons
Origins

I didn't think there was a new album about to be released, I didn't think that "Natural" was a taste of a new album (I imagined more of a simple outtake from "Evolve" or some soundtrack for an upcoming movie or TV series), it rarely happens that a band finishes the tour of their last album playing it almost entirely and then immediately releases a new album (usually there's a break period followed by a return to the studio), I hadn't even considered the possibility of an album on the way, I only found out thanks to a surprise check on Wikipedia. Yet "Origins" came out just two months after that rain-soaked odyssey concert in Rho.

Let's not kid ourselves, let's not expect anything sensational from this fourth work. Previously, we have criticized Imagine Dragons for their often too flat sound, for a production that doesn't highlight the ideas, and for an approach that looks too insistently at the charts; these flaws remain and are likely to persist, we might as well take the band for what it is and enjoy without overthinking the ideas that are indeed present. The band continues to explore areas often tending towards a trendy electropop, but there is always something that makes Imagine Dragons at least decent amidst so much crap, the offering remains quite varied, with a good mix of genres and influences, the tracks each appear quite different from one another and the album, in fact, can even surprise and doesn't bore in the least, also helped by its short duration (only 40 minutes).

Among the tracks worth mentioning, we can point out the pleasant electronic hard rock of "Machine," the summery and lively folk of "West Coast," the aggressive drum'n'bass with dubstep accents of "Digital," the almost '80s new wave suggestions of "Only," the slow pace of "Stuck" with sounds and vocals that almost wink at Sigur Rós. "Zero," instead, seems like a modernized "Close to Me" by The Cure. However, the two tracks that best enhance the melody are "Cool Out" and "Bad Liar," trendy and lightweight to the bone but with highly impactful choruses. There is a good search for sounds in "Boomerang," sure if the production highlighted them, the result would be better (and this applies a bit to the whole band's production). "Natural," on the other hand, seems like an attempt to make noise, it's a radio-splitter track, where voice and percussion tend to excessively cover the simple acoustic phrasing on which it is built, you can really feel it's a track produced specifically for radio airplay, but it doesn't go beyond that. However, the two tracks that leave little and don't take off are "Bullet in a Gun" and "Love," based on a somewhat dull and quite elementary trip-hop.

Let's say overall, it can work as is, also because we have finally locked away the hope of a quality leap, we listened to it without expecting anything; in the end, it's yet another good album, that fully earns a pass, saving itself and in a certain sense even distinguishing itself in a decidedly abhorrent pop landscape, however, without taking off. Imagine Dragons continue to be the poor man's Tears For Fears and as long as they achieve success it'll always work out fine for them. But this situation favoring them without there being true artistic maturity... how long can it still last?