Reflections (From The Vault Of Smoke + Mirrors)

The Las Vegas pop-rockers had a legit claim to the title of Biggest Band in the World in the stretch between their debut album, 2012’s *Night Visions*, and its 2015 follow-up, *Smoke + Mirrors*. It seemed that Imagine Dragons had skipped the “humble upstart” phase and proceeded straight to full-blown arena-rock spectacle with their blend of Coldplay-esque schmaltz and Obama-era Americana of the “stomp-clap-hey!” variety, with a pinch of EDM thrown in for maximum festival appeal. *Smoke + Mirrors* became the Dragons’ first album to debut atop the Billboard 200, buoyed by a lead single, “I Bet My Life,” that still feels omnipresent on rock radio, and in Truck Month commercials. Ten years later, *Reflections* celebrates their sophomore album’s anniversary with 13 unreleased tracks from the original recording sessions, plus a folksy demo version of “I Bet My Life.” The band wrote a good deal of *Smoke + Mirrors* on the road during their massive, 170-date 2013-2014 world tour, which might explain the “Imagine Dragons on island time” riddims of “Woke” or the French touch of “Monica,” a disco number about letting a date down easy. Needless to say, the Dragons let it all hang out here, from the “Kraftwerk meets filthy dubstep drops” of “The Ghost Intervention” to the experimental noise-rap of “I Get Carried Away.”