Lights and Owl City

She’s played this city more than five times in the last two years. She now calls it home. And she’s all grown up!

LIGHTS took the stage last night at The Sound Academy for a packed house of over 2,300 screaming fans eager to see and hear the songstress perform. Rather than run out in her usual casual getup, she donned a more mature blouse and pants for the show. That set the undertone of the show for me; a bit more sophistication resonated through the crowd while she sang through her hits.

She began in the same way she started her show at the Kool Haus just last November, but changed things up the second she did a beautifully rendered acoustic version of Rancid’s “Fall Back Down”. From that point, she seemed to loosen up even further and really get in sync with the crowd. She has called Toronto her home before, and this time she proved it, cozying up with the crowd as if falling on a big comfy couch that was the audience.

I’m noticing at this show just how incredible Lights’ songs might sound if they were stripped to a beat and laid under iconic rap artists. Imagine LIGHTS + Eminem or LIGHTS + Jay Z! I’m only surprised more people haven’t done mashups with these songs since The Ice Remixes were released on iTunes with people like K-Os and DJ Deadman.

Next came the, well, awkward part of the show. Owl City. I really liked the song Fireflies, as did the rest of the human population, and I can appreciate that he has his own style. But this guy is just plain weird. His real name is Adam Young (why Owl City, I don’t know), and he is eccentric, which is always good in this world, but he takes it beyond eccentric and lands in crazy-town.

Let me set the stage. He came out and did an incredible drum solo, fooling the audience into thinking that he was actually the drummer. Until he removed his PENGUIN HEAD HOODIE WITH FEATHERS TAPED ALL OVER IT. Comparing his latest song Vanilla Twilight to Fireflies is like comparing white to off-white. They’re the same damn song! I don’t mean to be overly critical, but at the end of the day, his music was good, but you only need to hear one song to hear everything.

LIGHTS can be found online at www.iamlights.com and Owl City can be found at www.owlcity.com.

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