The Childlike Wonder of Rich Aucoin

Photo courtesy of Scott Munn

Picture yourself running a no-reason, Forrest Gump-like marathon, except you’re with all your friends, there’s actually a finish line, and you’re approaching it. You’ve got these rad neon runner shorts on, your chaffing nipples are bleeding rainbows, and every shitty thing anyone’s ever said to you is being recycled into feel-good fuel for your big finish. For thousands of people across the world, that feeling is akin to listening to a Rich Aucoin record.

Mozart wrote songs about farting, Van Gogh cut off his own ear, and Dali wore weird capes. Like his childlike, artful predecessors, Rich Aucoin, too likes to steer to the left of the norm. Instead of throwing a guitar pick into the crowd for a lucky fan to catch, Aucoin throws gym-class rainbow parachutes so that everyone can feel like they’re part of the magic. “I describe my show as a big group sing-along to songs you don’t know, covered in confetti and parachutes, and the sweat of your friends who are hugging you on either side,” he says.

The free spirit of Canadian indie synth-pop just put out his second studio album, Ephemeral, which, like his first EP, synchs up with one of his favourite childhood films. “The record was written to a 1979 claymation of Le Petit Prince, so I watched it and figured out where all the animation meets were,” he tells me, half-laying down on the grass, propping himself up with one elbow on his longboard. “I figured out when the scene changes happened and made a time-code chart of how many songs there could be and what each song would thematically be about. Then I wrote lyrics that more or less described what I thought the song should be about, as well as what’s going on on the screen.”

His first EP, We're All Dying To Live, was written to jibe with How the Grinch Stole Christmas, à la “Dark Side of Oz.” For Rich, all of life is a motion picture, and if he’s got anything to do with composing the score, it’s going to be an existential experience dripping in the audio-equivalent of finger-painting a Picasso. If he hadn’t followed his music-making dream, he tells me he’d probably be cooped up in an editing studio somewhere on the set of a movie, exercising and expelling the creative juices out of his brain through a different medium. “I think I’d try and be involved with the film industry in some way, either writing, doing music or sound effects, or being involved in the technical side.”

If you put a DJ through art school, slipped him some Ambien, locked him in a basement with a Macbook, an audio-interface and had old stop-motion films looping on a screen in background, you’d probably be greeted with the likes of an Aucoin album once you let the poor guy out.

On the film reel that runs through his colourful mind, Rich has been slicing and splicing mental frames since he was a kid. “I’ve always really liked the whole gambit of filmmaking,” he says. It’s a fascination that shows through not only in his music-making, but in his music videos. In fact, the video for one of his biggest singles, “It” was a homemade mash-up of Generation X blockbusters, featuring Aucoin himself playing roles of Forrest Gump, Venkman from Ghostbusters, De Niro in Taxi Driver, and E.T.’s Elliott, just to name a few. “I guess I’m always experimenting with writing like a film composer, but for pop songs.”

The beautiful thing about his music is that it appeals to such a broad-range of weirdos, ravers, beat fiends and post-emo folk alike. His melodic, often-gang-vocal, sometimes-sad but always epic tunes become this even-keel playing field for people who want to vibe out and high-fives strangers. Harmoniously, that’s what Aucoin himself likes about his music too: “I think, the moment when a bunch of people decide to get on board with something and when something clicks and there’s that energy that gets created… that energy really feels great to be a part of,” he tells me about his favourite part of performing.

Photo courtesy of Scott Munn

Aucoin is an intelligent, soft-spoken hype-hippie, humbly unraveling parts of his brain that are way cooler than most people’s. “There’s so much weight to something like Confucius or Christianity or values, like, ‘do unto others as you would have them do to you,’” he tells me, picking handfuls of grass from around him. “But, like, if you wanna essentially say that in a really simple, lighthearted way, just, don’t be a dick, that’s all you gotta do,” he laughs.

Aucoin has brewed, bottled and branded a potent musical experience unlike any other artist in Canada, weaving in and out of dreamlike reprisals and fuck-yeah fire-starters. Despite the fact that he’s not necessarily a veteran of the scene, he’s long overdue for a break from the daily grind. “In the last couple years, I played almost every weekend, only having a couple weekends off ever in a row,” he says. “So, it’s really odd for me to not play at least once a week.”

But don’t lose sleep over the thought of an Aucoin hiatus – Ephemeral was just released on Sept. 9, and the guy’s pretty stoked about showcasing his latest masterpiece. After all, it only took three years to create.

Hillary Windsor wishes her life was a claymation mosh pit set to the sounds of Rich Aucoin and Judy Garland - @hillarywindsor