Imagine Dragons weaves “tight, punchy” album with stripped-down Loom

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How do you follow a 32-track double album? If you’re Imagine Dragons, you deliver the shortest record of your career.

The nine-track Loom — 10 if you count the bonus J Balvin-featuring version of lead single “Eyes Closed” — lasts about as long as your average sitcom, which guitarist Wayne Sermon tells ABC Audio was a reaction to the massiveness of its predecessor, the two-part Mercury project.

“We kind of just wanted to do the opposite of that,” Sermon explains. “Which was write a lot of songs, and then just really, really be self-critical as much as we can and just give people just a really tight, punchy sort of an album versus the more expansive thing we did on Mercury 1 & 2.”

Fittingly, Loom features a leaner sound compared to the bombastic, arena-ready style that ID has cultivated over their career. Sermon credits that change in direction to working with the production team Mattman & Robin, who preach “less is more.”

“[Previously] we’ve been all over the map where we’ll layer 12 guitars to make one sound and we’ll record three drum sets,” Sermon laughs. “More is more is a lot of times what we’ve done.”

Loom not only features a stripped Imagine Dragons sound, but also stripped bare lyrics from frontman Dan Reynolds, who Sermon feels has become more direct in his songwriting after being more metaphorical earlier on.

“I don’t wanna say Reynolds hid behind the metaphors or anything … that’s just the way he liked to write,” Sermon says. “As the years have gone on, I think he’s been able to be just a little more honest and vulnerable, and just kind of really be purposeful and direct with what he wants to say to people.” 

Loom is out now.

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