Imagine Dragons – Continued Silence EP (2012) ENGLISH

Youtube often divides people: we like it because it gives us the opportunity to watch our favourite artists’ videos, to share funny family moments, to show our own editing dedicated to some movie or TV show character; we dislike it because of its poor quality sound, its massive results that sometimes doesn’t help us in our research or because we’re not always fully prepared to watch a maybe-soon-to-be Spielberg’s home-made video…

For my part, I’m still an aficionado of good old videos and kind of care about this audio-visual media. It has also provided me with great surprises… Mostly on the right side where four videos are suggested to us. Some names do ring a bell on the back of my memory, some names are totally unknown to me. Sometimes, one of my mouse clicks can go from a fast switching mode to… a magical moment.

So I saw a name yesterday – Imagine Dragons – that sufficiently intrigued me to make me wanna check what it was all about. I click on the “It’s Time” and… that’s a hit. The song starts with percussions associated with hands clapping (and most likely feet beat as well) that immediately gives us the song’s tone. To that great rhythm is added some mandolin chord that is a plus for the song: it makes the melody even more captivating. Then, the voice… a “common” voice that reminds me of someone else. Once the chorus starts, I’m definitely into it… My feet follow the rhythm and my hands are doing the exact same thing on my thighs.

All right, all right… let’s calm down. It wouldn’t be the first time I found some band’s interesting first tune that ends up being… the only one. Let’s take a second one. At random : “On The Top Of The World”. Hey… some clapping again. I must be in a « clapping mood » because I enjoy that way of giving a song its main rhythm. Sort of a manufacturing brand, in fact. I might as well let you know that I was watching outside the window while listening to that track and was telling myself that the weather wasn’t exactly fitting the season we’re in right now. Once the song was finished, I didn’t care much about the weather: the song and its lyrics brought enough Summer sunshine in the place and I was moving en mi casa swaying hips to honour this great song. Looking like a fool never killed anyone… I’ve told this a thousand times so let’s enjoy those moments, right?

I started looking for information while listening to these two songs and found out that the band is from Las Vegas. The “Cause after all this city never sleeps at night” from “It’s Time” suddenly makes perfect sense. You have to know that I have a tendency of letting my brain go in a particular direction while my eyes keep reading stuff. My eyes and my brain ended up merging together on the same subject: while I was reading that Imagine Dragons recorded their two first EPs at the Battle Born Studios, I was mentally associating Sin City to… The Killers. Well, well… so Imagine Dragons recorded in the studio owned by Flowers and his band mates. Small world, eh?

Of course, finding out about this pushed me to try finding out about more stuff… pushed me to listen to more stuff. Aaaawww, OK you got me! I pay my usual music supplier a visit and bought “Continued Silence”. Once on my hard drive, I realize it won’t take me much time to listen to the album: it’s actually an “EP”, an Extended Play of six songs. Well that’s a start, let’s deal with that for now…

Opening with « Radioactive »… Vocal harmonies are great and that track has some very fascinating melody.

Same feeling with “Demons” except that I’m touched by the lyrics. They seem common and pessimistic and yet, there’s something in these lyrics that make them look “real” to me. Some subtle observation of things that sometimes crosses some human being’s mind. And ultimately, a thin thing, a thing called hope…

« Round and Round » would make Coldplay totally jealous… because I’m quite sure Chris Martin and his friends would have certainly wanted to have full credit for this one. And they actually could have because the song sounds a bit like the four British guys’ sound.

Here I am (already!) listening to “My Fault”, amazing song that is exactly where it has to be. What a beautiful way to end an album! “Is it my fault we’ve been missing each other?” Oh well… We didn’t miss each other, boys: we’ve just found each other and… what a beautiful encounter!

I’m still trying to figure out why Dan Reynolds ‘voice sounds familiar to me. Something similar to James Morrison? Or Guy Garvey, Elbow’s singer? Or maybe John Mullane of In-Flight Safety? Or not… In fact, I’m still torturing my brain to find an answer to this… If you have any suggestions, I’ll take them. Although it maybe doesn’t even matter in the end if the voice is sweet to our ears.

It sometimes happens that I « go away » while listening to some songs… I mean I shut myself away in some kind of bubble and start imagining a video for the song I’m listening to or perfectly “see” some of the sentences I’ll write on the subject… “Continued Silence” helped me escaping the real world for 20 minutes. Maybe it’s a good thing that the album is so short in length. Maybe I’d have stayed in my very private bubble until someone had to bring me back with help of… French rap.

Mmm… maybe so.. Well, no… Twenty minutes is really not enough, boys! Your album may be called “Continued Silence”, I don’t want any of that silence… I want more! More, mooooore!!! Was I bewitched? Could Imagine Dragons be, in fact… demons ?

Continued Silence Tracklist :

Radioactive

Demons

On Top Of The World

Round And Round

It’s Time

My Fault