Album Review: Imagine Dragons – Smoke + Mirrors

Posted on March 10, 2015 by bgibs122

Who the fuck are Imagine Dragons?

Even after going through Smoke + Mirrors, this is a hard question to answer in a meaningful way. Sure, Imagine Dragons are the biggest mainstream rock band right now, but they’re also profoundly faceless. And they aren’t just faceless next to tastemaker indie rock like Japandroids and Cloud Nothings; that’s an easy (and cheap) victory. No, Imagine Dragons’ flaunt a blandness missing from peers in their weight class, like fun., Fall Out Boy, and that guy that does “Riptide”. So, how do they do this? Is their identity made clearer on this album? Let’s take a look at the band’s music and overall aesthetic, and see what we can find out. Let’s start with the name.

“Imagine dragons”
A band’s name should introduce their look and vibe before you hear anything. Whereas “Interpol” sounds like some exclusive club or clothing label, or “Mumford & Sons” calls to mind old-timey, suspenders wearing, aw-shucksters [ed: OR NOT], “Imagine Dragons” calls up an image without doing anything with it. “Imagine dragons” doing what? What kind of dragons? Are we imagining dragons as cultural constructs, or actual flying lizards? What do we do with these dragons? It makes you want to grab Dan Reynolds by his black tee-shirt and ask, “Bro, I imagined a fucking dragon, now what?”

Profound dumbness aside, I had a point in mentioning the name. It’s a Blank Slate For Badassness; the name ensures you’re thinking of something cool, you fill it in with your idea of cool, and the end result is like, double cool without effort. And this is what Imagine Dragons functionally does with music: takes whatever trends it can grasp, stomps around for a few minutes, and calls it done. I’ve heard this described as malleability or adaptation, but I don’t buy it for ID. They aren’t like, say, OneRepublic, who can cop styles while still sounding like themselves. No, when Imagine Dragons apes AWOLNATION on the shanty lurch of “Gold”, or lifts the verses from “Riptide” before stealing Mumford & Sons’ kick-drum on “I Bet My Life”, it just sounds like bad imitation. Sometimes this doesn’t have an awful result; OneRepublic knock-off “Hopelessness Opus” is passable, and opener “Shots” is respectable, synth-friendly festival-pop fare. So, in a way, Imagine Dragons lives up to their name: you’ll think of something, it might be ugly, it might be cool. But it’ll be someone else’s idea.

Big Drums
Speaking of “Shots”, that song has some clattering drums in its final chorus that give it extra oomph. They’re also a subtle reminder that, from the summer when “Radioactive” was everywhere to Kendrick Lamar turning the band into the world’s least intricate drumline, drums have been ID’s defining instrument. It makes a degree of sense: drums are the perfect way for a rock band that doesn’t want to be a rock band to be loud. It’s the approach used on the aforementioned duds “Gold” and “I Bet My Life”, but also on the Middle East tinged nu-metal outing “Friction” (which I guess could double as ID’s Linkin Park wanna-be cut?). The drums throughout Smoke + Mirrors are the only thing bolstered by returning producer Alex da Kid; they’ve got enough depth and hip-hop bounce to keep the album’s languid arrangements moving. Being drum-heavy fits the band’s aesthetic; drums are big, dumb, surface noise and instant gratification without any thought involved.

And you know what? Sometimes that’d kind of awesome. It’s the approach Imagine Dragons uses on Smoke + Mirrors‘ best cut, the stomping, cartoonishly overdriven rocker “I’m So Sorry”. It channels the same ranging id that made “Radioactive” resonant, but in a less gimmicky way, and sounds almost like a live cut (if you’re an arena rock band, this is exactly what you should want). Add in that some of Dan Reynold’s mock profound lyrics here actually sound badass (“You’re the son of a stepfather”), that QotSA-lite outro, and it’s a winner. Sure, drums aren’t a thinking man’s instrument of choice, but does everyone need to be burdened with thought?

“Smoke and mirrors”
…

Guys.

Come on.

You cannot be the poster child for bloated, artistically shallow, creatively anemic rock, and name your album Smoke + Mirrors. It’s either trolling or asking for it, with zero middle ground, and this band isn’t smart enough to troll. But how does no A&R, publicist, manager, label exec, anyone not say anything about naming the album Smoke + Mirrors when the music itself is smoke and fucking mirrors?

Ranting aside, the concept of “Smoke and mirrors” on the album runs back to Reynolds’ disillusionment with life after becoming famous. In context, the song “Smoke +Mirrors” (and several cuts from the rest of the album) serve as Imagine Dragon’s “Teenage angst has paid off well.” It’s not ineffective per se, but the band mostly uses the theme to crank out more mopey but nondescript in the vein of hit “Demons”.

And that, to me, is the real smoke and mirrors to this album: fluffy, Coldplayish ballads that aspire for self-reflection, but go up in clouds. Were it not for the clunker “I am the color of boom”, “Polaroid” would pass without notice, and “Dream”, “Summer”, and Mumford redux “Trouble” all drift in one ear and out the other. The back half of this record is so driftless that not even extended, honestly pretty outro on “The Fall” can save it.

Getting back to the start, who the fuck are Imagine Dragons? They’re a band that writes at length about finding themselves, but never told us who they were in the first place. Self-discovery can be a great subject, but when the lyrics, the music, and the delivery are such constant letdowns, there’s no reason to stick around and find out who the real Imagine Dragons is. Night Visions was a sleeper-hit, and that might be true of Smoke + Mirrors as well, so we’ll see. Or it might just disappear in a puff. Two stars out of five.

tl;dr: Imagine Dragons copy a bunch of other people to find themselves. It doesn’t work, 2/5.

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Album Review: Drake – If You’re Reading This It’s Too Late

Posted on February 23, 2015 by bgibs122

Most of the way through If You’re Reading This It’s Too Late‘s “No Tellin'”, Drake implores “Please do not speak to me like I’m that Drake from four years ago, I’m at a higher place“. It’s a tossed-off line from deep in a five minute song, but it made me think: four years? Is that how long Drake’s been around? Shit, it is. And not just as the guy hoping to catch Lil Wayne’s runoff; Take Care came out for years ago this upcoming November. Then I realized that since Take Care, he hasn’t really gone away, and thought of something else:

When’s the last time Drake botched something?

Okay, sure, he’s got a solid album track record, but that’s easy.  Let’s just look at the guy’s 2014: pulling the rare hosting/musical guest double duty on SNL, hosting the muscled up snooze-fest that is the ESPYs, and forgoing an album in lieu of SoundCloud singles and features with buzz artists. And none of these were fuck ups. Drake, the most joked on entertainer working, is in some kind of extended can’t-lose zone. Even the infamous airball counts as a W, if only because Drake literally missing his big shot is the Drakeiest outcome possible, and we love him for that shit.

All of this is to say that a surprise album/mixtape is putting a lot of public goodwill and credibility on the line. Surprise album drops imply that this shit’s so good, you need to grab it now, without any hype or warning (it’s a strategy that worked on me. That and, as a sensitive mixed kid, I basically owe Drake tithe to begin with). I realize this is a weird thing to say, but if If You’re Reading This It’s Too Late sucked after paying for it, and you got “0 to 100/The Catch Up” for free, people would have been pissed. And then, given the nature of If You’re Reading This, it’s guerrilla release is baffling at first, then makes total sense.

If You’re Reading This It’s Too Late is Drake’s fullest rap album. There’s no “Marvin’s Room” or “Hold On We’re Going Home”, and barely even something as radio palatable as “Miss Me”; the bulk of the album exists in the same loose flow, almost stream of conscious style Drake embraced on “0 to 100/The Catch Up,” free of sturdy melodies and powerful hooks. When he sings more than raps, like on “Now & Forever”, “Legend”, “Madonna” or “Jungle”, it’s melodically sparse and more a soundscape than anything else; outside of arguably “Now & Forever”, there’s nothing like a ballad here. And the fact that Drake mostly keeps to rapping is, for the first time, a really good thing. Drake’s always been a competent, not compelling, rapper, and you can hear him sweating through extended verses. He’s never going to have an absolutely bonkers song where he just goes for off seven minutes like Lupe Fiasco does on his new album (oh, by the way, there’s a new Lupe Fiasco album); he’s not that kind of rapper. And he’s finally stopped pretending to be. He’s perfected the delivery on his loose, cadence-heavy, stop-start flow, and sounds like he could do this shit all day.

No where is that more apparent than the album’s early hot streak between “Energy” and “No Tellin'”. “Energy” and “10 Bands” are more compact, relying on crisp snares and twinkling synth loops under Drake venting his frustrations at dealing with bullshit friends in the former, and boasting about his cash and hard work in the latter. “Energy” has already gotten buzz, and it makes sense; it’s If You’re Reading This boiled to its core. Despite that, I find myself more drawn to “Know Yourself” and “No Tellin'”. “Know Yourself” is one of the stronger headphone tracks here (see: Boi-1da’s drop), and “Running through the 6 with my woes“ is an early contender for the record’s meme lyric–try it out. “No Tellin'” is five minutes of Drake mugging, and it kinda works. Part of that’s the compressed effect on his vocal, part of it’s the varied flows he uses, and part of it’s the fact that he’s actually got a few clever riffs (“Beside Ricky Ross, Aubrey’s the biggest boss here, huh“).

After the mostly sung mood-piece “Madonna” (the sixth song on the record, but the first 40 produces), If You’re Reading This meanders a bit. “6 God” and “Star67” aren’t bad cuts, but feel redundant after seeing Drake achieve similar results earlier on. He’s perfected how to tell The Story of Drake, but it’s occasionally one he’s told before. PARTYNEXTDOOR shows up for two decent tracks, but “Preach” can’t help but feel inconsequential. In fact, length is the biggest woe on If You’re Reading This; there’s just no way to justify this thing’s 17 track/69 minute run time. It wouldn’t even require hard edits to pare this down a notch: ditch “Preach”, “6 God”, Lil Wayne collab “Used To”, “Company”, and maybe “6 Man” or “Jungle” if you’re feeling thrifty, and you’ve still got a solid album. Even after a midway stumble, “Now & Forever”, “You & The 6”, and “6PM in New York” (I’m also partial to the Frank Ocean lite “Jungle”) help If You’re Reading This stick the landing.

After an hour plus of frigid aloofness and isolation, the triumphant “6PM in New York” rings in what might be Drake’s most technical accomplishment. It’s still overlong and wobbles in spots, but as a loosely experimental and daring release, it hits way more than it misses. Drake tops himself not just in his performance, but in the material; his writing’s sharper than it’s ever been, and on the oversharing conversation-with-Mom personal “You & the 6” and “6PM in new York”, he’s actually compelling as a rapper. And this is technically a mixtape before the proper album. There are plenty of keepers here, I can’t wait to see what comes next, four stars out of five.

tl;dr: Drake aces the surprise release, and flips off his label while he’s at it, 4/5

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Radio Rant: Mark Ronson ft. Bruno Mars – Uptown Funk!

Posted on February 16, 2015 by bgibs122

Hello, and welcome to Radio Rants. Who’s giving it up today?

I always expect it to blink.

First things first: who is Mark Ronson? Ronson, dutifully playing the role of Guy Striking Cool Poses To Disguise The Fact He Can’t Dance in the video, is a British DJ/producer whose been working in some capacity since the turn of the century. Read his full rap sheet if you like, but the takeaway is he’s got a fairly wide genre pallet, and collaborated heavily with Amy Winehouse, producing “Valerie”, “Back to Black”, and “Rehab”. He reads as solid enough if not earth shattering industry hired gun that’s been involved with greatness, but perhaps seldom its cause. Oh, and he’s a credited producer on a little tune called “Locked Out of Heaven”.

I get how Ronson and Mars can work together. Both these guys have a jack of all trades, multi-genre portfolio, the difference is that Mars was practicing Elvis routines and the dance in “Smooth Criminal” while Ronson was crate digging for New York hip-hop records. They update the sound of old favorites with modern flourishes so as to not get lost in their influences, and the result is something fairly distinct. This is why “Locked Out of Heaven” worked so well.

And you know what? “Uptown Funk” does it even better. It’s one of those songs that’s so fully formed, fun, and wholly aware of its “I am on my shit” status that it’s as hard to resist on the first listen as it is on the hundredth. Everything, from that vocal sample serving as the main bass line to the tight, Nile Rodgers-esque guitar riff to the post-chorus horn line to the gang vocals throughout, falls exactly into place, like an immaculate DJ set distilled into (a somehow too-short) four and a half minutes. The production’s spot-on, too; nothing gets lost in the mix, and all the elements sound larger than life, especially the drums.

Honestly, I think the drum sound and the beat here might be “Uptown Funk”‘s secret weapon. Lemme explain. For the last year or two, a lot of our soul-based pop music has used treble-y, syncopated, snare-heavy beats that work more for measured flailing and swaying around than full body dancing (this is one of four or five reasons why it’s hard genuinely dance to “Happy” or “Shake It Off” without feeling like an asshole). This kind of beat’s alright, but ultimately feels like dance music without a groove, which is hard to really get into.

There exists out there what I call “The Michael [Jackson] Beat”: an unfussy but unrelentingly powerful, bottom-heavy beat around which every other rhythm in the song is tied to. For a song to have The Michael Beat, no matter what else is happening, you have to not only be able to always find that propulsive, unchanging, beat driving things forward, but hear how every other aspect of the song ties back to it (see: “Remember the Time”). I recognize that this is hardly an MJ trademark–it shows up all over in Steve Wonder, Prince, James Brown, and Kool & the Gang, and modern acts like Janelle Monae and LCD Soundsystem (even Katy Perry used it once)–but listening to the first disc of HIStory extensively when you’re five and six tends to shape how you see things. “You Wanna Be Starting Something” is probably the purest example of The Michael Beat in action: every single fidget, riff, vocal, and handclap in the song is rooted in one, never deviating beat. And you can totally hear it at work in “Uptown Funk”, most obviously in the post-chorus breakdown when the horns come in. What makes The Micheal Beat so cool is that it’s percussive in a way that makes dancing to it look effortless, and anyone can perform the fuck over it.

Which brings me to “Uptown Funk”‘s strongest asset: Bruno Mars. I don’t know who, and I don’t know when, but someone attached to “Uptown Funk” how to get the best out of Bruno: don’t tell him to be sweet, don’t tell him to try sensual, just slap him in a sportcoat, drop him in front of the guys, and tell him get cracking. We’ve finally coaxed this guy into the recording booth. And really, the song wouldn’t be as good without someone selling it this hard in front of the mic; it’s silly shit, but Mars makes “I’m too hot, make a dragon wanna retire, man” actually sound kinda cool, and the sneer on “Cuz uptown funk gonna give it to ya!” wouldn’t work if it was dialed down. And the backing gang vocals make the song stronger, too; the call and responses are not just a lot of fun and perfectly deployed, but give Mars something to play off of. I’m sure come next album cycle, Sweet Bruno, Brooding Bruno, and Sensual Bruno will all be back, but please, more Sportcoat Bruno, too.

Because “Uptown Funk” is one of the best hits we’ve had in awhile. It’s super catchy, danceable, well-made, a great performance, and even sharing space with throwbacky jams like “Lips Are Movin'”, “Sugar”, and “Thinking Out Loud”, incredibly distinct. I’m also relieved for Ronson, not just because he’s finally notched a massive hit with his name attached to it, but it sounds like “Uptown Funk” almost gave it to him during its seven month writing process. Ronson and Mars have always been great at blending styles, and they finally found one of their own.

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2015 Grammy Recap

Posted on February 9, 2015 by bgibs122

Behold, your Grammys in five seconds.

Credit: Billboard.com

The image of Sam Smith and Mary J. Blige cruising through an extra cushy version of Smith’s already Ambien-friendly ballad “Stay With Me” sums up everything you need to know about the 2015 Grammy Awards. The stifling elegance! The suits! The ubiquity of Sam Smith’s face! The ballads! The strings! Everything you know about the crushingly comforting tedium of last night’s broadcast is all right there.

Ok, we’ll hit the performances first and then circle back around for actual awards and closing comments, because good grief this year was dreadful. The Grammys have kind of a shitty existence as far as award shows go: they lack the prestige of the Oscars, the camp of the Tonys, and the warm atmosphere of the Emmys. Even with a vested interest, you can’t watch them while pretending there are any stakes or real seriousness to the night (Grammy Twitter is the 100m dash of the Snark Olympics for this exact reason). The most you can hope for is some entertaining performers.

But we even got screwed out of that last night. I won’t line by line every performance, but any talent show that dumps Usher, Ariana Grande, Katy Perry, Gwen Stefani, and Adam Levine in tepid balladry is making the wrong move. How do we get something as fiery as Kendrick Lamar and Imagine Dragons last year, then a bunch of dirges the year after? The collaborations, for the most part, were either painfully obvious or utterly baffling: Chris Martin joining Beck on “Heart Is a Drum” is asking for soft-rock quips, there’s the aforementioned Sam Smith and Mary J. Blige, and then the “wtf?”ness of Tom Jones and Jessie J, or Ed Sheeran and ELO. Sheeran’s overqualified supergroup on “Thinking Out Loud” somehow managed to be both: putting John Mayer in what I honest to God thought was an especially hacky John Mayer single at first is so on the nose it’s almost audacious, but why on Earth would you hire renowned virtuosos Questlove and Herbie Hancock to keep time on this slice of cheese?

Credit: RapRadar.com

There were a few bright spots, though. Annie Lennox brought witchcraft and stage presence to “I Put a Spell On You” to lift Hozier’s gloomy “Take Me To Church” out of the muck. Pharrell’s wringing the last mileage out of “Happy”, but the kinda bonkers, Hans Zimmer-fied version was an entertaining spectacle for a night that needed it (ditto for Madonna’s “El Yeezus” performance). Juanes, Eric Church, and Miranda Lambert gave competent band jams, but three numbers really stood out. Kanye’s “Only One” is just such a damn sweet song, and the one-two of Beyonce doing “Take My Hand, Precious Lord” and John Legend and Common’s “Glory” ended three and a half hours of Important Music with actual important music.

But, my favorite performance of the night was Rihanna, Kanye, and Paul McCartney with a loose and flat out fun “FourFiveSeconds”. It’s just a goofy, dashed off, surprisingly organic performance that features some of the best vocals Rihanna’s ever done. It’s the kind of thing the Grammys should be founded on that got bogged down by the like, double album worth of mournful songs that we heard.

Anyway, now for the mixed bag of the awards.

I’m calling it a mixed bag almost purely for the fact that Kendrick Lamar’s Grammy winnings went from 0 to 100 in the catch up from last year, picking up Best Rap Performance and Best Rap Song for “i”. It’s a strike out from what I predicted, but I was happy to see St. Vincent win Best Alternative Music Album (“happy to see” meaning “heard about it on Twitter,” since the Grammys can’t be arsed to put more than 6 awards in a nearly four hour production), and Paramore nail Best Rock Song. The wins were kind of tedious outside that, though; yeah, Iggy lost, probably because the Grammys weren’t ready to die on the hill again for categories they can’t be bothered to air live, and the televised awards were mostly safe bets.

I am, of course, talking about the regime of dullness that is Sam Smith’s near sweep. Smith went home with Best Pop Vocal Album, Best New Artist, Record of the Year, and Song of the Year; he was denied the coveted sweep with Album of the Year (more on this in a second), probably because someone getting all Big Four would have been exciting. I have mixed feelings on Smith. This has been lost in the year’s Grammy narrative so far, but it’s important, especially only a year after The Great Straight Savior, to acknowledge that Smith is openly gay, and that his sexuality informs his music. The acceptance speech where he thanked the man who broke his heart was hands down the best one of the night.

But Smith’s sexuality is the only progressive thing about an otherwise suffocatingly conservative artist; In the Lonely Hour and “Stay With Me” mine every classicist whim the Grammys cater to, and not in an interesting way. He’s an exceptional singer, but I’ll give him a better chance when he writes stronger material. Or gives Disclosure another call, either/or.

So, let’s jump into this Album of the Year debacle. Beck won for Morning Phase. I thought it was an okay album, but I would have called it the 4th most likely to win until holy shit, Prince just said Morning Phase and I was not ready. Then again, neither was Beck. I get it, though; Morning Phase is a good, carefully sculpted, warm, singer-songwriter album that just feels comfortable to listen to. The same could be said for chunks of last year’s winner Random Access Memories, or Mumford & Sons’ Babel from the year before. If you’re so inclined, you could even construct one of those “It’s for lifetime achievement” arguments for Morning Phase. It’s a safe, predictable bet, and c’mon y’all, the Grammys are nothing if not predictable (and, minor aside, Beyonce occasionally glides by on aesthetic to cover lesser moments). It’s almost a truism that the least challenging and most random seeming choice will usually win Album of the Year. Is it a backwards and unfulfilling choice? I’ll leave it up to you to answer, but I’m currently three songs deep into Morning Phase, and trying to will myself into a universe where it sounds like the AOTY. I can imagine the little stickers on the jewel case, though.

God bless Kanye West. Just when you thought he’d mellowed out into his dad and probably-barbecues-with-Jay-Z phase, he goes off on the Grammys, calling Beyonce‘s loss “diminishing the art and not respecting the craft.” Per tradition, there’s been a lot of people reacting to Kanye instead of what he’s saying (with the added, weirdly ingrained idea that music made by one guy is somehow more ART than music/visual media made by a team led by an individual executing a very specific vision), which has been lost somewhere in translation. But I get it. To see Beyonce get the nomination amid non-threatening records like Morning Phase, x, G I R L, and In the Lonely Hour felt kind of token. Not only was Beyonce a quite good but not #FLAWLESS, carefully sculpted, personal record, it’s 21st century artistic event; Morning Phase is just another Beck album. I how one lost and the other didn’t, and I can see the other way, too. But one takes fewer logical leaps than the other.

So was Morning Phase winning Album of the Year a triumph of artistic merit over a hopelessly overrated hype machine, or is it the racially motivated assassination of Queen Bey by the coward Grammy committee? The answer, as it usually is with the Grammys, is somewhere in a disappointing middle.

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