Imagine Dragons – Vector Arena (Concert Review)

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Imagine Dragons have been touring, almost continuously, for nearly seven years, Dan Reynolds told last night’s Vector Arena audience. They’ve only managed to record two albums in that time, but they have honed their live act into a tight, sharp and utterly superb performance.

The evening began with a reasonable, but not especially inspiring, opening show from The Rubens, three brothers and two of their mates from New South Wales — they last played the Vector Arena supporting the Black Keys, said singer Sam Margin; there’s a reason why they’re still a support act — who played a forty-minute set that was, for reasons that were never made quite clear, cut short by two songs. What they did play was pleasant but for the most part unremarkable pop-rock, Margin’s voice struggling to keep up with his band’s music from time to time. Having negotiated with the audience, who did, to be fair, seem quite familiar with the band’s material, which songs to drop, The Rubens closed their set with Hallelujah, by far the standout track from their new album Hoops.

On the stroke of nine, house lights went down and cheers went up. And for the next hour and a half, Imagine Dragon, led ably by Dan Reynolds, a phenomenal singer and a frontman so energetic as to make Mick Jagger look sedentary by comparison, performed as outstanding a concert as I have seen in a very, very long time. The show opened with Reynolds kneeling, taiko-style, in front of a large perspex bass drum; as the band tore into Shots, the opener to Smoke + Mirrors, the album this tour is promoting, Reynolds began — and he barely stopped for the duration of the show — to dance and bounce and prance across the stage. The man is possessed of a remarkable voice, an instrument he played last night to great effect. Imagine Dragons’ repertoire is hard to pin down — it is, essentially, a potent melange of art, prog and modern rock — and calls for a versatile singer. Reynolds was, last night, more than equal to the task.

But this was not just Dan Reynolds’ show. The other two Daniels in the band — guitarist Daniel Wayne Sermon and drummer Daniel Platzmann, as well as bassist Ben McKee, are all talented performers. While a few of the opening numbers — Shots, Trouble, It’s Time — were largely keyboard-driven, I’m So Sorry opened with Sermon ripping through an impressively gritty intro on his gold-top Les Paul, and an pleasingly bouncy I Bet My Life closed with a classic rock guitar solo. Platzmann, like Sermon a graduate of the Berklee College of Music, played full-body drums as though his life depended upon it, locking in with McKee to keep the performance tight.

Much of Imagine Dragons’ recorded work, in particular their second album, is heavily produced and processed; I was concerned that there might not be much scope to expand on the recorded versions of their songs. I was wrong. From the drum-pounding ending of Trouble to the acoustic intro and the percussion opening played by all four members of the band in unison on individual drums that led into Gold, most songs had extra detail, extra dimensions that made for an excellent live experience.

Even I’m So Sorry, the heaviest number of the evening by far, found extra depth. While the song was played just as it appears on the record, Imagine Dragons performed it with a ferocity and energy that delighted, and perhaps exhausted, the audience. Fortunately, then, the intensity of songs like Friction was balanced with a lighter sound on numbers from their first album, Night Visions; whileI’m So Sorry was fierce and angry and intense, Demons or On Top Of The Worldhad a little more lightness to them.

Imagine Dragons are a highly accomplished band, but Dan Reynolds is clearly the star of the show. Despite his between-songs chat verging on the unbearably corny — “I feel deep love and a connection with you through music” is a line only a pony-tailed American with a beard could pull off unironically — he sang with a remarkable combination of clarity and power. Forever Young, a cover of the Alphaville song from 1984, served largely to showcase the dynamic range of his singing, the rest of the band taking a break after playing Roots, an impressive new song whose video, Reynolds assured the audience, had been filmed in Auckland over the previous two days.

By half past ten it was all over. As I left the venue I listened to comments from audience members; the consensus was that this had been a triumphant performance. And it was. Imagine Dragons played a truly exceptional show last night, a powerful, intense, magnificent set that showcased the talents of four very able musicians. I doubt I’ll see a better concert this year. Brilliant.

Steve McCabe

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