Talking insight and insecurity with Rich Aucoin
If Canadian pop had a singular breakout star in 2011 it was Rich Aucoin. Largely that was achieved through blunt-force theatrics: The Haligonian’s electro-big band LP We’re All Dying to Live was completed with the help of 500 musicians; legendarily he toured Canada by bike; he earned a viral YouTube hit with the grandiose Arcade Fire-esque “It” which spoofed everything from Ghostbusters to A Night at the Roxbury ; and his live show which Cancon blog Cokemachineglow called “transcendent” earned rave word-of-mouth reviews using live video syncs to The Grinch exuberant motivational slogans (“we are so lucky to be alive!”) and a crowd-swallowing kindergarten-style neon parachute to seal the deal.
But such accolades expectedly were met with a healthy dollop of skepticism. Much of the praise wilfully ignored Aucoin’s songs; as a result he felt at times more like an irreligious PR-minded evangelist and less like a musician. I figured this out early on: In 2010 while critiquing Aucoin’s NXNE performance for Halifax alt-weekly The Coast I wrote that Aucoin’s effort felt heavy on style low on substance. Panic Manual and Chromewaves who’d caught the same performance agreed. That’s when Aucoin reached out to me.
“Hey” he wrote in a Facebook message. “Should I reel back my antics? I like doing them but is [the parachute] a bit much? You said my music could get lost in a show so from your excellent critiquing point of view should I pull back a bit?”
I advised him succinctly that haters gon’ hate. (That’s verbatim.) But whether Aucoin’s show is a distraction or complement to his music — or both — such a message indicates two things: First it’s a reminder that Aucoin is primarily a musician not a circus act. And secondly he’s a heckuva lot more self-aware than his high-wattage PR antics might suggest.
“I’m so glad I had you to talk to” he says. “[NXNE] was a big moment for me — it was the first time I had to deal with actual criticism. Now I pay attention to everything that’s said about my show. When [reviews] are bad and they’re correct it gives me something to consider. I’m constantly trying to get better.”
He’s not lying. In fact after each performance — and he played hundreds in 2011 landing in every major Canadian city as well as Brazil the U.K. and Iceland — Aucoin circulates his personal phone number to the audience. (He estimates that he has received roughly 8000 texts and his iPhone messages app takes 30 seconds to load.) And he’s used that crowd-sourcing to further refine his craft: In 2012 he promises to play a series of concerts in bouncy castles. He’s crafting new songs he says will be “punkier faster thrashier.” And he’s also developing elements of his show that encourage audiences to y’know listen to his music.
“We tried this last night in Vancouver — I had a big black parachute made instead of a coloured one” he says. “Since the show’s so visual I wanted to have a part of the show where you closed your eyes and listened. We’re still working on perfecting it — making it as dark as possible — and we’ll have worked it out by the time we’re in Calgary.”
The criticism Aucoin endured however wasn’t limited to his live show. Dying to Live earned considerable lumps for being overly referential — one exclaim.ca commenter declared him a “thief and a bozo” for his transparent love for Arcade Fire and the Flaming Lips — and such criticisms were valid. Indeed on first listen “It” undeniably references the orchestral grandeur of Funeral ’s “Wake Up”; “Undead” shares its claustrophobic drum stutter with Neon Bible ’s “No Cars Go”; and “Push” might be the tidy intersection between Daft Punk’s “Harder Better Faster Stronger” and Justice’s “DVNO.”
Aucoin knows this. And to his credit he’s not shy about citing his influences — he has a song titled “Brian Wilson is A.L.I.V.E” after all.
“When I was recording I was cognizant of the sound I was going for” he says. “A lot of it was about figuring out how to re-create the sounds of my favourite bands. But those songs exist for the moment — when you see those songs at a show they sound completely different.”
And then shit gets heavy. Aucoin compares his constant musical tinkering to Theseus’s paradox a philosophical question that asks whether an object can retain its essence once all its components have been changed. “It’s like that apocryphal problem — a guy has his favourite axe but then he changes its handle its head and the shaft. It’s still his favourite axe even if it has no original parts.
“It’s the same with music. I always wonder how much of a song I can change before it becomes something completely different. There’s a song for example on my first record [ Personal Publication ] where I totally rewrote the chords and changed the arrangements. I’m not sure if I’m ever going to perform it the way it was written. And that keeps things interesting.”
Such comments illustrate why Aucoin is equal parts polarizing and magnetic: He’s a pop star. He’s a thief. He’s a philosopher. He’s a bozo. He’s a PR machine. He’s a musician. And like it or not dude’s undeniably fascinating.
