Dani and I went to see Owl City at The House of Blues. The first warm-up band, Unwed Sailor, consisted of a talented drummer and three people who stared at the floor. In the absence of any melody or words (no singer) all of their songs sounded like the first five seconds, repeated for five minutes.
The second act was Mat Kearney, who was quite good.
But the audience was clearly there to see Owl City. This was a very different audience than I’d ever encountered at House of Blues, which normally attracts—how can I put this—drunk Gen Xers. Owl City attracts ages 8 to 60, but the average was probably 14. We also noticed the audience was essentially 100% Caucasion. The place was packed, upstairs and down.
I was afraid Owl City would turn out to be one guy (Adam Young) with a Macbook, but there were actually six talented musicians, and an assortment of instruments: two drum sets, many keyboards, cello, violin, bass, vibraphone, xylophone, and many guitars. Since there is almost no guitar in their music as first I thought the guitars were just props, but they did play a couple of songs where Adam demonstrated excellent guitar proficiency.
It was surprising that the music sounded completely different when played live. They used almost no auto-tune on the voices, and there was much more acoustic stuff. Definitely more complex than the typical tween band. They played two hours, which was great, but it meant we were standing for four hours. House of Blues is still the worst venue in town, but this was an excellent concert.