A nonstop whirlwind of “high highs” and “low lows” is enhanced with creative and adventurous production that defies expectations while remaining characteristically Imagine Dragons-esque. The followup to their 2012 smash hit Night Visions, Smoke + Mirrors finds Imagine Dragons boldly developing their sound through the same kind of musical exploration, lyrical depth and sonic experimentation that made their debut album an international success. You can only hear a song the first time once.American rock band Imagine Dragons released their highly anticipated sophomore album Smoke + Mirrors this week. I was just talking to (bassist) Ben (McKee) about this the other day. After spending so much time on the little details, there is such an importance to that first-time listening experience. "But with the Internet and YouTube and stuff, it would be such a shame if the way everyone experienced the record for the first time was watching it stream on YouTube through someone's phone. We definitely won't do the whole new record. So I'm really excited."Īsked if they'll be giving fans an early taste of "Smoke and Mirrors," Platzman says, "Without revealing too much, we have a couple of tricks up our sleeve and you may be hearing a new song or two. I love his records also but his live show is great. I saw Snoop and the Chili Peppers play a show together when I was in high school, actually, and it was amazing. But I will say that would be really cool. "I wouldn't say anything about whether it will or will not happen. "I mean, how cool would that be, right?," he says. A DIRECTV rep hinted that there may be some collaborating between the two acts, but if Platzman knows the answer, he's not talking. I think at the end of the day, you cannot help but sound like yourself."īefore the album hits the streets, Imagine Dragons are headed to Glendale to headline DIRECTV's Super Fan Festival with Snoop Dogg. And that's what we have with the new record. So we really tried to avoid both of those and just tried to create music that all of us liked and that all of us could get behind. "On the one hand, you could be like 'OK, we have everyone's attention so now we have to prove we're really good musicians and we're artsy and make avant-garde decisions and make a super out-of-left-field crazy record.' Or we could try to make 'Night Visions 2.' That's the other end of that spectrum. "I feel like there's a huge trap if your first record does well," he says. The result of those sessions is an album Platzman feels will be seen as a logical progression for Imagine Dragons.
After you work on a song for eight hours, I don't know what anything sounds like anymore. "We tried to make it 9 to 5 as much as possible and really give ourselves a break.
"So instead of having two weeks or a month in the studio and that's it, where your mindset is cramming as many hours as you can into the workday, it was literally our place," the drummer says. "Smoke and Mirrors" was recorded in a studio the alternative-rockers built between releases. So luckily we didn't realize about all the pressure and everything until we had already made the record." It was only when we came in off the road that we were kind of realizing how crazy everything was. We were playing shows and the audience was slowly getting bigger. "But we were kind of in the eye of the hurricane for the whole thing. The listener is really smart today and can tell if it's coming from an honest place or not. Let's write 12 'Radioactives.' But that would be creating music out of fear. "We could have gone into the studio and been like, 'Radioactive' was really good. "It talks about creating music out of fear," he says. That's no way to make a record anyway, he says, citing a book titled "Effortless Mastery: Liberating the Master Musician Within." "It wasn't until we finished it," he says, "and people were like, 'Does it make you nervous after 'Night Visions?' that it was like, 'Oh geez, well, after you say it that way, now I am.' But when we made it? No." RELATED: 10 best Imagine Dragons songs (so far) And they did it with their first full-length release, the double-platinum "Night Visions," which spawned the biggest-selling rock song of the year, a nine-times-platinum triumph called "Radioactive."Ī lot of people in that situation would have found the prospect of returning to the studio to cut a follow-up to such a major breakthrough somewhat daunting, if not terrifying.īut drummer Daniel Platzman says it never crossed their minds.Īt least not while he and his bandmates were actually working on the album, "Smoke and Mirrors," which is due to hit the streets on Tuesday, Feb. No rock artist sold more copies of a single album in 2013 than Imagine Dragons.
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