Owl City Swoops Through the Background of Denver

The tickets were purchased in April and stuck in a drawer, those three agonizingly long months have boiled down to this one moment when endless gray sky gives way to the pumping bass and the flickering black lights of the Fillmore Auditorium. It is Tuesday, July 12, and Owl City (aka Adam Young) performs to an on-their-feet crowd at the Fillmore Auditorium in Denver, Colorado.
 
I jostle my way to the front of the crowd and watch as two warm up bands rile up the crowd. "I'm just here for Matt Kearney,"says one woman. Matt Kearney was the second warm up band to come on, she leaves after he finishes. The first warm up band, Unwed Sailor, seemed to be playing their songs way too loud to distract from the fact that they had no vocals and their songs sounded very similar.
 
When finally the lights go dark and the voice and creator of Owl City, Adam Young, appears onstage and begins to sing. Hundreds of screams fill the air as the chorus of his first song, The Real World, begins to echo through the room. His band includes a cellist and a violin player, also a drummer, Breanne Duren, and him. Breanne Duren is Owl City's keyboardist and backup singer on many of his songs, including Honey and the Bee and The Saltwater Room. Young played most of the songs on his new album, All Things Bright and Beautiful, and a few songs from previous albums. Adam Young danced erratically around the stage, his guitar slung low, singing his heart out.
 
On one of his last songs, If my Heart was a House, a tall boy walks up to a shorter girl, her dark hair falling over her shoulders, and asks her to dance. The quiet slow songs are perfect for the two angelic dancers, swirling through the soft silver light. I can't help but sway to the music and I raise my hands to form a heart above my head. As the house lights come on and the band forms a line to bow, Adam Young spots my heart hanging high above the crowd and, smiling, flashes one back.