Owl City – Manchester Academy 1
March 4th, 2010 by RBROwl City
Support: Lights
Manchester Academy 1
22nd February 2010
With his number one single fireflies, it was no surprise that the venue for the gig had been moved to Academy 1 from 3. Two thousand five hundred owl city fans queued from 5PM and fought the bitter cold.
Opening up the stage was a three piece electro pop band from Canda, Lights. Considering the singer Valeria Poxleitner had to cancel her last two shows due to loosing her voice, they performed well, singing songs from their debut album The Listening like Lions, Ice and February Air. They even pulled out two acoustic performances for the last two tracks. Unfortunately, they seemed a little uncomfortable on such a large stage and lacked movement.
At 9.20 silence broke, then the instrumental came in for umbrella beach. Two young violists appeared on stage to kick start the performance. Once the beat started started to flow Adam Young appeared on stage with a cup of tea! The crowd pushed forward so much that they were extremely compact at the front of the venue. Most of the songs played were from the album Ocean Eyes, while Adam Young flailed around on stage and the crowd began to dance and jump around to the songs bird and the worm, tip of the iceberg.
Within the hour long set Owl City played fireflies starts and 2500 fans begin to scream the lyrics out as if they weren’t even trying. If you didn’t know any better you would have thought he wasn’t singing as the fans drowned out his vocals with their own ecstatic voices. Hello Seattle broke out of the speakers for the encore. His presence on the stage was enormous, he was using all the stage possible dancing to his tracks and playing the keyboards and guitar while he looked as if he was having the best time ever!
His final words were “see you again Manchester, deal?” the crowd was not at all disappointed and will definitely be coming back for more.
Words: Steph Readman
Photos: Jordan Green
