Imagine Dragons will headline Glastonbury. It won’t be this year, and it probably won’t be next year, but we’re sure that within the next five years we’ll see the Las Vegas five-piece topping the bill of the Pyramid Stage. We know that it’s a bold proclamation, but hear us out: their debut album Night Visions has sold over 300,000 copies over here to date, spawning five UK top forty singles (It’s Time, Radioactive, Hear Me, Demons and On Top of the World) and earning them a Grammy for Best Rock Performance in the process. Their new album Smoke + Mirrors (out today) is absolutely fantastic – it’s a continuation of Night Visions’ epic arena-ready sound, and we’re sure that the likes of Gold and Shots will become the anthems of this summer’s festivals.
However, the main reason why we’re putting our money on them being future festival headliners is because they’re bloody good live. The band’s hour-long set at London’s 850-capacity House of Vans is an exercise in how to construct and execute a crowd-pleasing show – hit singles and fan favourites from Night Visions are blended with new tracks from Smoke + Mirrors, with a smattering of fan favourites thrown in for good measure.
Frontman Dan Reynolds is an exercise in uber-cool charisma. Dressed, like the rest of the band, in a slim-fitting black t-shirt and jeans, Reynolds has the crowd in the palm of his hand from the moment he saunters to the stage. The band look more than ready for their just-announced run of UK arena dates in the winter – they’re ridiculously tight, and it’s genuinely refreshing to see a band who are as enthusiastic about playing their new songs as they are about playing ‘the hits’.
Of the new songs, the blues-rock stomp of I’m So Sorry stands out – it’s like Imagine Dragons took a Black Keys song, mated it with Royal Blood and put it through a distortion pedal, and by God is it good. It’s filthy, gorgeous, and a definite future single. Show highlight On Top of the World gets the entire venue grooving, before obligatory set-closer Radioactive (which, somehow, sounds even better live than it does on the album) brings the night to a close in a storm of dub-rock euphoria.
We’d be shocked if Imagine Dragons weren’t headlining festivals within the next five years. They’re one of the best live bands around right now, and they’ve already got a bunch of arena-filling anthems to their name. London’s House of Vans is a venue that you seriously need to check out, too – not only is it a painfully good live music space, but it’s also home to a fantastic cinema, an exhibition area and (to the untrained eye) a rather terrifying skate park. To see a band as massive as Imagine Dragons play such an intimate venue is rare, and something that we don’t think is going to be happening again for a while. Keep an eye on Imagine Dragons – they’re only going to get better.
