Back in October, I ordered my tickets to see Twenty One Pilots in Ottawa on April 1st. I became a shameless fan of the two man band and the show did not disappoint. The show took place at TD Place right outside of downtown Ottawa and was held inside on one side of the hockey arena. Before attending the show, I watched every live show of the band I could on YouTube, so I was pretty familiar with how they perform live. However, those were only performances at festivals and I had never seen a concert produced for them and them only. The production was really impressive with pre-programmed lighting, graphics, CO2, and confetti. All of this combined to create the best concert I've seen to date. I kept track of all the songs they played and when so I'm going to review the concert based on each song.

Heavydirtysoul

As they normally do, Twenty One Pilots opened the night with an energetic performance of "Heavydirtysoul." The microphone iconically floated down from the ceiling of the venue and by the time it got close enough to the stage for Tyler to grab it, he showed up out of the CO2 that covered the stage and started singing the first verse to the first song on their sophomore album "Blurryface." About halfway through the song Tyler hit the floor as if he passed out (which he does during practically every performance of the song) and the crowd lost their mind, engaging them into the show right off the bat.

Stressed Out + Edit

The next song they played was their current chart topper from "Blurryface", "Stressed Out". The crowd was naturally psyched as I'm sure there wasn't a soul in the building that didn't know the words to the song. At the end of the song the stage went completely dark only to illuminate Tyler on the piano playing a soft outro on the piano to close the performance of the song.

Guns For Hands

"Guns For Hands", one of the more energetic and popular songs from their freshman album "Vessel", was next on the track list. This was the first song during the set in which I realized Josh's kick drum was vibrating the walls of the venue. Whoever is in charge of Josh's drum set and ensuring the drum microphones were set up properly did their job really well because each and every time Josh struck one of his drum pieces it was heard loud and clear throughout the venue. It was also cool that Tyler didn't even have to sing most of the chorus as the crowd pretty much took care of that.

Migraine

"Migraine" was the next song that they played and the crowd's knowledge of Twenty One Pilots' first album was blatantly apparent.

Polarize

"Polarize" was the next track played and this was the first time we saw Tyler play his bass guitar. The first couple of songs were high energy and this one calmed the track back down before bringing out his ukulele.

House of Gold / Can't Help Falling In Love (Cover) / We Don't Believe What's On TV

At this point in the show Tyler put on his Hawaiian shirt, white rimmed glasses, and concert ukulele and played a series of Twenty One Pilots songs that features a strong ukulele presence; which are some my favorite songs. He started the series with "House Of Gold" and proceeded to play a short (30 seconds) cover of Elvis Presley's "Can't Help Falling In Love" and Twenty One Pilots' "We Don't Believe What's On TV." During "We Don't Believe What's On TV" Tyler stopped the music and got the crowd to sing the "Yeah, Yeah Yeah!" segment of the track on his command. The crowd was very involved and was yelling the segment louder than they sang anything prior to the track. The song ended with a strong finish from the crowd belting out, "Yeah, Yeah, Yeah!"

The Judge

The Judge was the final song that Tyler had his ukulele for and unusually they finished the song strong with an energetic outro that I've never heard in a Twenty One Pilots set before.

Lane Boy / Doubt

"Lane Boy" was next and this was the last song that Tyler wore his Hawaiian shirt for. The "temptations" intro brought them into the distinctive start to "Lane Boy." Tyler also had the crowd do the usual "sit down" during the bridge of the song and jump up during the drop. I have a picture of that moment below. During "Doubt" Tyler also did a thing where one half of the crowd sang one part of the chorus and the other section of the crowd sang the other part of the chorus.

Holding On To You

"Holding On To You" was one of the better performances of the night as Tyler changed into a white sleeveless t-shirt and his iconic red beanie. Tyler started the performance in the crowd as you can see in the picture and sang the first verse with the support of fans in the front row. He also ran along the hockey boards in the venue during the instrumental portion of the song and Josh did his usual backflip off of the piano at one point during the song.

Ride

"Ride" was the song during this particular set that Josh was on top of the platform that the crowd held for his drum solo. They usually do this during "Semi-Automatic" but that song wasn't played at this show.

Tear In My Heart

"Tear In My Heart" was after "Ride" last night and the crowd was involved during the first line of the song, "An-nyŏng-ha-se-yo!" This song was a crowd favorite and the crowd sang along for practically the whole time.

Car Radio

As you can see in the picture above, "Car Radio" was undoubtedly the climax of the night. During the energetic part of the song Tyler jumped off of his piano and was jumping on stage along with the crowd. CO2 was firing off on all cylinders and Josh was going wild on the drums. Also, earlier in the song, Tyler disappeared from the stage and appeared right behind me. Tyler proceeded to sing part of the song there and eventually ran back down in time for the end of the song. You can see how close he was to me in the picture below.

Goner

With the night winding down Twenty One Pilots performed the closing track to their "Blurryface" album, "Goner." It starts off slows and ends with a bang. For some reason though, the crowd knew all at the same time to take out a piece of paper with the Twenty One Pilots logo on its you can see in the picture.

Trees + Crowd Drum Performance

As they traditionally do, Tyler and Josh closed the night with "Trees" and played drums next to each other in the crowd with confetti flying around the venue and CO2 blasting from the stage. I saw them do this performance in videos before, but in person it was awesome!