LOOM is a compact, nine-song standard album that leans on Imagine Dragons’ familiar pop-rock force while shifting between hip-hop-rock, swaying grooves, and arena-sized uplift. Its best moments come when that energy meets a sharper contrast—playfulness against unease, or a bold surface against vulnerability. The result is an engaging, tightly paced record, though its quick changes of style do not always add up to a single, fully distinctive musical world.
What is LOOM?
LOOM is Imagine Dragons’ sixth studio album, released June 28, 2024. The band made it with longtime collaborators Mattman & Robin, who produced the tracks. The standard physical sequence contains nine songs; Apple Music lists a 10-song, 31-minute edition, and Universal Music Japan describes a domestic edition with two bonus tracks. Those counts refer to different editions, not a single uniform track list. Universal Music Japan’s release announcement and Apple Music’s album listing document their respective versions.
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The album title and cover invite uncertainty rather than a fixed narrative. In an Associated Press interview, singer Dan Reynolds said the image could be read as either sunrise or sunset, an ambiguity between an ending and a beginning. He also described “loom” as carrying two senses: something approaching and a tapestry being woven. Those ideas offer a useful lens for the record’s mix of emotional states, but they remain Reynolds’s framing, not a required interpretation. The AP interview includes his comments on the title and cover.
What does LOOM sound like?
The album stays close to the band’s pop-rock center: large vocal hooks, punchy percussion, and arrangements built to swell. Within that frame, it reaches for several different textures. Apple Music characterizes the sound as signature pop-rock expanded with rap and electro touches, while Universal Music Japan points to funk-pop, reggae-rock, and ballads. Those labels describe the palette, but the record’s more telling quality is the contrast between its songs: restless and hard-edged in one moment, loose and buoyant in another.
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- Format: Vinyl...
- Released: 2020-08-07...
- Genre: Pop...
- Released: 2020-08-07...
- Genre: Pop...
“Wake Up” opens with a tense, unsettled charge. Its hip-hop-rock pulse and urgent vocal delivery make it feel more paranoid than triumphant, a useful break from the polished uplift that often defines the band’s biggest choruses. “Take Me to the Beach” moves in the opposite direction, loosening into a strummy, swaying groove. The contrast keeps the early run lively, even if the stylistic shift is more about mood and momentum than a radical change in the band’s sound. AP’s Mark Kennedy similarly described “Wake Up” as paranoid and slightly demented, and “Take Me to the Beach” as strummy and swaying.
“Eyes Closed” has a harder, more declarative exterior, with a performance that projects confidence while leaving room for strain beneath it. Reynolds told AP that the song was intended to sound outwardly strong and blustery, with vulnerability underneath. That push and pull is one of the album’s more persuasive ideas: the song does not need to abandon the band’s oversized presentation to suggest something less secure below it.
Rank #2
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- 2 LP release.
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Where does the album’s emotional range land?
Reynolds has described the album as drawing on sadness, heartache, joy, loneliness, desire, anger, and love. The songs do not settle into one sustained mood so much as move through fragments of intensity and release. That gives LOOM a sense of motion, though the short format also means some emotional turns arrive before they have been explored for long.
“Kid” is the clearest example of the album’s taste for juxtaposition. Its driving rhythm and anthemic scale make it feel like a call to action, while its tone can remain playful around darker ideas. Reynolds told AP that the song grew from words spoken over a drum loop during a chaotic time in his life; the choir helped turn it into an exhortation for America. He described the combination as “Heavy concepts, but playful at the same time.” The track’s tension between levity and seriousness is more interesting than a straightforward motivational reading, even if the big-chorus approach can make its message feel broad.
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Rank #3
“In Your Corner” and “Don’t Forget Me” bring the sequence toward more intimate emotional territory, while “Fire In These Hills” closes the standard track list with a final, widescreen swell. Rather than resolving the album’s ideas into a neat story, the closing stretch leaves the sense of a band moving among different kinds of longing and resolve. The nine-track length helps: the record gets in and out before its recurring scale and intensity become too predictable.
Does LOOM feel fresh for Imagine Dragons?
Reynolds told AP that the band scrapped earlier demos and approached the album with a clean slate. The credits still point to continuity: Imagine Dragons worked with Mattman & Robin, longtime collaborators who produced the record. That combination is audible in the outcome. There is a willingness to change the surface from track to track, but the core remains recognizable—big dynamics, direct hooks, and vocals aimed at emotional clarity.
Rank #4
- Nirvana- Nevermind
That familiarity is both the album’s strength and its limitation. The rhythmic pivots and tonal contrasts keep the sequence from becoming monotonous, and songs such as “Wake Up” and “Kid” gain character from their uneasy or playful edges. But LOOM rarely lets those gestures dismantle the band’s established pop-rock architecture. Listeners looking for Imagine Dragons to leave that framework behind may hear variation more than reinvention; listeners who value the band’s immediate, high-impact songwriting will find the record’s concise shape appealing.
Independent reader supportYour contribution helps us test, update, and keep practical guides available for everyone.Which LOOM track list is the standard one?
The official store’s vinyl and standard CD listings show this nine-song order. The sixth title differs slightly between the two pages: the vinyl listing uses an apostrophe in “God’s Don’t Pray,” while the CD listing prints “Gods Don’t Pray.” Use the styling on the specific edition being discussed.
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- Height: 7.75in / 20cm, Width: 6in / 15cm
- By Michael Ochs
- Hardcover
- 576 pages
- Imprint: Taschen
- “Wake Up”
- “Nice To Meet You”
- “Eyes Closed”
- “Take Me To The Beach”
- “In Your Corner”
- “God’s Don’t Pray” (vinyl listing; “Gods Don’t Pray” on the CD listing)
- “Don’t Forget Me”
- “Kid”
- “Fire In These Hills”
The official vinyl listing describes a single LP in gatefold packaging. The standard CD listing gives the CD sequence and says shipping is limited to US customers. Universal Music Japan’s April 25, 2024 announcement and June 28 release announcement document a Japanese domestic edition with bonus tracks. Edition details and store availability can vary; the nine-song list above is the standard physical sequence, not a claim about every digital or regional version.
Verdict
LOOM works best as a brisk, energetic record that uses contrasts to refresh a familiar sound rather than reinvent it. Its shifting moods give the nine-song standard edition momentum, and its strongest tracks hint at more complexity than their stadium-ready surfaces first suggest. The album is less compelling when that scale makes its ideas feel generalized, but it remains an assured, accessible entry in Imagine Dragons’ catalog.
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