The Fray sold out its first show in the D.C. area several years ago, so it wasn't surprising that this show would follow suit — and in only a few minutes. Fans lined several blocks down the street waiting to get in, braving temperatures in the low teens. Thankfully, The Fray's live setup featured more than 50 lamps decorating the stage to warm up the crowd, everything from chandeliers hanging from the ceiling to table lamps underneath Slade’s piano. With the show taking place weeks before the new album made its way on iPods and car stereos, many of the new songs were met with times of silence and swaying before a roar of cheers at the end.

The band peppered its biggest hits — How to Save a Life and Over My Head (Cable Car) — in between small sets of new piano-driven pop tunes  such as Absolute, Enough for Now, Say When, Never Say Never and Happiness. "It is so exciting now to have new songs and have a full set to work with and be able to play with the set list more and more," Slade says. "We've stayed close to our formula if you can call it that. We have written about what we know and what we have known. Whether it is from our own lives or our friends, we try to keep things as close as possible. I think we pretty much did that with this album, also. There is no one life that I know about and could write about better than my own."