Delivered swiftly after
Evolve
-- it follows that 2017 set by a mere 17 months, practically a blip in the context of modern pop --
Origins
adheres to its predecessor's kaleidoscopic digital aesthetic. Nominally a rock band -- and they're more than comfortable pulsing to a big, banging beat --
Imagine Dragons
are deliberately amorphous, a blob rolling along sucking up anything in its path. Often, they're content patrolling their own backyard, relying on an EDM-inflected arena rock that consciously recalls
Coldplay
at both their sweetest and most urgent. The difference with
is, this blob sucks up a bunch of different sounds. "Only" shimmers with retro-synths that stir up the ghosts of new wave, "West Coast" stomps like early
Mumford & Sons
, "Machine" bounces to a malicious industrial throb, "Cool Out" glides along to a neon-lit groove. Every one of these slight variations in sound do fit within the wheelhouse of
, but that's only because the group takes pains to be able to fit onto every kind of playlist imaginable: rock, pop, electronic, soul -- any popular sound that can be sculpted and shaped by a streaming service. As such, listening to
uncannily re-creates what it's like to experience -- or maybe more accurately, consume -- popular rock-oriented music in 2018: everything sounds vaguely familiar, vaguely connected, all designed to function as a soundtrack to whatever task you'd like. ~ Stephen Thomas Erlewine