Owl City: Live from Los Angeles Blu-ray Movie

Rating summary

Movie		4.0
Video		3.0
Audio		4.5
Extras		1.0
Overall		4.0

Owl City: Live from Los Angeles Blu-ray Movie Review

Lighting up the night like 10,000 fireflies.

Reviewed by Jeffrey Kauffman February 20, 2012

There’s an innate cheeriness to the American midwest that even casual observers have a hard time not noticing. Those of us who have lived for most of our lives on one of the United States’ two ocean coasts are often accused of being elitist snobs, cynical and frequently dour, and truth be told it’s hard to argue with that assessment. There’s a radical difference in temperament between a lot of those raised in, say, California or New York and someone raised in, say, Minnesota. Owl City is the brainchild of Adam Young, a Minnesotan who managed to conquer the music world pretty much from the confines of his parents’ basement, where he set up a laptop driven music studio that thus far has generated millions of albums sold and some top charting singles. Young is a preternaturally sweet songwriter, which may lead some to claim that his work doesn’t have any depth or nuance, and that would be a mistake. While Young’s innate sunniness spills over and infuses the adoring crowd in Los Angeles, making this concert something of a love-fest, Young manages to craft some of the most deliciously complex pop out there at the moment, albeit pop that does tend to fall into certain predictable patterns. Young’s lyric writing is more adept than many contemporary songwriters, with some fun rhymes and an awareness of Nature and its mysteries that make many of his songs play like neo-Modern takes on the poems of the Transcendentalists. And Young’s music, while weirdly “happy” even when talking about thoughts of suicide, offers a lot of supremely effective hooks, usually built out of small interlocking motives that Young weaves together with a craft far beyond his still young age. Young has been accused of having ripped off The Postal Service, but those with longer memories might find Owl City to be one part Scritti Politti, one part Tears for Fears (without the primal scream angst), and one part Terry Riley. Whatever the precursor ingredients of this musical stew might be, Young’s approach with his oddly named assemblage Owl City is some of the most enjoyable pop this reviewer has had the pleasure of listening to over the past several years.

It was probably three songs into this concert, at the point Owl City launched into yet another inordinately cheery tune called “Hello Seattle” that I started to think about how different this band’s approach to pop and rock traditions really is. As a resident of the Pacific Northwest myself, and one who saw the Grunge movement become this region’s claim to fame, I had to laugh a little to myself in thinking about the “evolution” from the dour, depressive worldview of someone like Kurt Cobain to this “shiny, happy people” ethos of Owl City. It was probably the Seattle reference which brought this all to mind, but that stands as a good exemplar of what sets Owl City apart from many of their pop music contemporaries: Young and his troupe are obviously optimists. The tunes here, while harmonically varied, tend to settle into major keys, and the pointillistic dollops of accompaniment Young assigns to any of a battery of keyboards gives his music a glittering vibrational quality which seems to aurally insinuate a sense of wonder and joy.

My sense is that some rock purists are going to decry Owl City’s music as being too lightweight to merit any serious consideration, but this live outing proves that Young and his band can rock quite convincingly when push comes to shove. What’s really interesting in watching the band and listening to them is how they segue from quieter, more delicate pop laden moments to something at least approaching thrash. Young has an incredible arsenal of color at his disposal with his huge array of keyboards (including some really fun retro sounds that hearken back to the dawn of the synthesizer age), but he acquits himself quite well on acoustic piano and both electric and acoustic guitar at various moments in this concert. It would have been nice if his band members could have received a little more attention. His drummer Casey Brown is especially impressive, pounding out some very complex cross rhythms which blend effortlessly with the manifold bits and pieces emanating from the synths, guitars, and violin and cello.

Owl City's set list includes:

The Real World

Cave In

Hello Seattle

Angels

Swimming in Miami

Umbrella Beach

I’ll Meet You There

Plant Life

Setting Sail

The Bird and the Worm

Lonely Lullaby

Fireflies

Dreams Don’t Turn to Dust

Kamikaze

Meteor Shower

January 28, 1986

Galaxies

Alligator Sky

Deer in the Headlights

The Yacht Club

How I Became the Sea

If My Heart Was a House

Owl City: Live from Los Angeles Blu-ray Movie, Video Quality 

There are a lot of buzz words that get bandied about on the internet with regard to Blu-ray (and DVD) reviews, but Owl City Live From Los Angeles, which is presented on Blu-ray courtesy of Eagle Vision and Eagle Rock Entertainment with an AVC encoded 1080i transfer in 1/78:1, is a near perfect example of two anomalies that regularly disrupt concert videos shot in low light with (ironically) bright stage lighting glaring out the camera. These two issues are posterizing and banding, and Owl City Live From Los Angeles is literally awash with both of these problems. The posterizing bathes the image in an almost hallucinogenic fuzziness, and the banding is so bad at times that concentric circles of various light shades seem to be emanating out like ripples from a still pool that's had a rock thrown into it. The stage here is quite dark, and only a large lighting array upstage, which is aimed squarely out at the audience (and the cameras), affords any lighting source. As such this high definition presentation is frequently hampered by a loss of shadow detail and a lack of exceptional fine detail. Occasionally when things are at least adequately lit and we get a close-up of Young, fine detail improves dramatically. Unfortunately most of the band members are lost in the overall haze of the presentation, and only Young is ever really clearly seen, and even then only in fits and starts.

Owl City: Live from Los Angeles Blu-ray Movie, Audio Quality 

Owl City Live From Los Angeles follows the standard operating procedure of most concert releases from Eagle Rock by offering three audio options, a lossless DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1 surround mix, an uncompressed LPCM 2.0 stereo mix, and a standard Dolby Digital 5.1 surround mix. Both lossless options sound magnificent, though it's recommended that the surround mix be utilized as Owl City's music is so multilayered, with little dabs of color entering here and there, that the surround mix really opens up the soundfield and allows a lot of space for the listener to enter into. Fidelity is exceptional throughout this track, with some amazingly wide dynamic range, courtesy of Young's penchant for segueing suddenly from quieter, acoustic moments to sudden bursts of manic electronic energy utilizing his entire band. The mix here is very appealing (one assumes at least some of what we're hearing is computer driven pre-records, including the cool synched video feed featuring rapper Shawn Chrystopher on "Alligator Sky").

Owl City: Live from Los Angeles Blu-ray Movie, Special Features and Extras 

Extended Interview (1080i; 15:26) includes the complete unedited interview which is also available in snippets in one of the two play options on this Blu-ray (the other option omits the interview snippets and just has the songs). This actually starts with "Fireflies" playing over stop motion montages of the stage being set up, then moves onto a nice sit down with Adam Young, who discusses everything from his job stocking shelves at Hy-Vee in the midwest to trying to recreate his computer driven tunes on stage to what the name Owl City actually means.

Owl City: Live from Los Angeles Blu-ray Movie, Overall Score and Recommendation 

Hard core rockers will probably dismiss Owl City as too "poppy" and, frankly, too happy to listen to, but as millions of record buyers have already proven, there's an audience out there for this kind of unabashed melodic tunesmithing. Young is incredibly appealing, low key and down to earth and the live show eschews a lot of the glitz and glamour that regularly accompany Top 40 touring bands. The fact that Young was able to score such chart success from the confines of his parents' basement is actually testament to his personal entrepreneurial ambition and he should be afforded all due respect, no matter what one's personal tastes may be with regard to his actual musical output. But really only the most jaded listener will tend to dismiss Young's inerrant ability to craft memorable hooks and evocative lyrics. Though this Blu-ray has some issues on the video side of the equation, the music is so charming that overall this release comes Recommended.