Throwing shapes with ODESZA. Live in Toronto

On a Monday night a mix of people gathered at Toronto’s MOD Club to see ODESZA. This was the band’s second visit to Toronto in 2014. A few months back we had a chance to see Harrison Mills and Clayton Knight perform at Tattoo for the CMW, which felt like the very moment Toronto drew their arms around the duo for the first time.

This time no one was wondering who the two tall dudes on stage were, everyone knew – the show was sold out fairly quickly and weeks prior to the date most of the chatter was surrounding people’s frustration about forgetting to buy tickets.

Mills and Knight were able to bring together everyone from newly-legal-to-drinking to ravers, hipsters, and your average Toronto city folks. The night begun with opening performances by Ambassadeurs and Hayden James both of whom dropped a solid set of beats although James’ sound set-up struggled a bit.

ODESZA’s set was accompanied by stunning visuals playing off the lyrics where appropriate while wrapping the audience into a hazy daze. With a handful of dolled up girls already sitting on the stage by the time the duo came out it was only a matter of time before people begun a dance party around Mills and Knight’s DJ table. Where’s the TP canon? Wait, this isn’t Girl Talk. A select few had their moment of fame on stage before being “escorted” back onto the dance floor.

Consistently giving their music away for free allowed ODESZA to build a solid fan base. The front of the room was moving around like a set of bouncing balls occasionally stopping to take a selfie. The more mature crowd was dancing and singing along in a more civilized manner towards the back.

Mills and Knight played tracks from across their full repertoire of music but the recent album, In Return, was the one that resonated with the larger portion of the filled wall-to-wall room. In Return is a largely lyrical album and, having dropped just recently, is still very fresh on everyone’s mind which is not to say that “My Friends Never Die” or “Faded” got less attention – I’m quite sure there was a small riot by the stage.

It is obvious that Toronto, like most of North America, has finally caught up with ODESZA. Now all we have left to do is patiently wait for the next track to drop.