Canadian Indie Rock band The Dears had a tough start by having their tour bus stolen.  This was probably a disheartening event, but you would not know it happened from their performance.  Front man Murray Lightburn began singing to a soft prerecorded song from the back of the dim room.  As he sang, the singer walked through the crowd holding a flashlight which he pointed at people, though seemingly not in an annoying way.  It was a nice change of pace for a starting song.  The rest of the band came on toward the end to do back up vocals.  The next song had everyone playing their instruments and was more rock and upbeat.  It was then I noticed there were a lot of keyboards on stage.  A couple for one musician and another for one more musician on the other side of the room along with a keytar as well.  The keytar did not have a lot of use though through the show.  A couple songs later Lightburn was singing up close to fans, showing he was into the music.  There was at least one fanatical fan who was constantly jumping up and down and was overall just excited to be there. 

The next song was "Lost in the Plot" which had an interesting intro and later changed in an unexpected way to a mostly drum and bass part that was nice.  Lightburn also began to get more passionate and powerful with his singing which I prefer for him personally.  After this song Lightburn told the San Diego crowd how lucky they were to be so close to the ocean since where they live it snows nine months out of the year.  It is not snowing there now, but they are not there.  He went on to say how he was glad we all were there as they did not know what to expect.  He then pointed at random people saying he saw them and finished saying, "Yes, you at the bar I see you too."  This is a nice gesture if you think about it.  He was trying to treat everyone as individual people and not just a mass, some sort of faceless thing.  Many musicians get this way where they might as well be looking at a wall, as if the fans did not matter.  The Dears are better than that though.  He followed this with "Berlin Heart", a mellow song that slowly picked up.

On the fourteenth song, "Lights Off", I was blown away by the epic of a song that topped all the others in intensity.  I was so glad they saved it for the song before the encore as it is definitely an ender. The short haired keyboardist went outside a couple times and I started to wonder why, but then when I saw the bucket of water and wash cloth being taken out, I put it together.  I felt grateful for her dedication and that she lasted almost the whole set.  It was only until the encore, after fourteen songs that she seemed about to give up.  She did not throw in the towel though, so to speak, but played one more song as the encore which only left the last one on the set list not done.  Fifteen songs was plenty for me and everyone else to be sure and looking at my watch it was a little past one.  The Dears had certainly put the effort in to make a great night of awesome music.