Conspicuously absent from the laundry list of influences the
Imagine Dragons
so often cite is
the Killers
, the only other Las Vegas rock band of note.
downplay the glamour
found so alluring but they share a taste for the overblown, something that comes to full fruition on their second album,
Smoke + Mirrors
. Bigger and bolder than 2012's
Night Visions
,
captures a band so intoxicated with their sudden surprise success that they've decided to indulge in every excess. They ratchet up their signature stomp -- it's there on "I Bet My Life," the first single and a song that's meant to reassure fans that they're not going to get something different the second time around -- but they've also wisely decided to broaden their horizons, seizing the possibilities offered by fellow arena rockers
Coldplay
and
Black Keys
. Despite the bloozy bluster of "I'm So Sorry" -- a
number stripped of any sense of R&B groove -- the group usually favors the sky-scraping sentiment of
, but where
Chris Martin
's crew often seems pious, there's a genial bros-next-door quality to
that deflates their grandiosity. Certainly,
is rock so large it's cavernous -- the reverb nearly functions as a fifth instrument in the band -- but the group's straight-faced commitment to the patently ridiculous has its charm, particularly because they possess no sense of pretension. This separates
ID
from
, who never met a big idea they didn't like.
like big sounds and big emotions -- and, if they can muster it, big hooks -- and the commitment to style over substance gives them ingratiating charm, particularly when they decide to thread in slight elements of EDM on "Shots" (something that surfaces on the title track as well), or Vampire Weekend's worldbeat flirtations on "Summer."
purposefully cobble their sound together from these heavy-hitters of alt-rock, straightening them into something easily digestible for the masses but, like so many commercially minded combos, how they assemble these familiar pieces often results in pleasingly odd combinations. These guys are shameless and that's what makes them more fun than your average arena rockers. ~ Stephen Thomas Erlewine