I leave Lee’s Palace. I need a jolt.
I head over to see The White Eyes (again, see last nights review here ) just to get the blood flowing (the festival goers equivalent of a 20 minute workout), I duck out five songs in to their set and head off to the Osheaga showcase at The Garrison.
After a brisk, enjoyable, though not necessarily noteworthy, set by Montreal’s Passwords, next up is Halifax-based party-starter Rich Aucoin. If you’ve never seen Aucoin before, his stage show is a live mash-up of all of those little, annoying, modern-day pop culture elements that we both despise and can’t get enough of – a bed-sheet is draped across the right corner of the stage on which Aucoin projects various pieces of YouTube ephemera and posts key parts of each song so the crowd can follow along (it’s the 21st century version of follow the bouncing ball)…
Aucoin’s show and sound are pretty ambitious; having the panache of The Flaming Lips (complete with confetti, my god, the confetti) and the driving robot-inspired funk of Daft Punk.
It’s a hot-mess and can only be best described thus-wise:
It’s dark in here…
No wait, there’s flashing lights now…Rich is wearing all white and seems to be holding a light-sabre….but, that’s a mic, not a light sabre…. but, there’s light coming out of it and its lighting up his face… looks cool! ….it’s starting to get a bit hot in here…
He’s diving in to the crowd now, I kind of want to get close to see what’s happening… wait, he’s back on the stage now…OK, take a breath…the song’s over… wait, I can’t take a breath, he wants me to read some lyrics so I can remember them when he plays the next song: “When you give it all up…you get it all back…” OK Rich, gotcha, I’m right here with you.
The beat kicks in again, we’re all jumping up and down now (Rich asked us to, so why shouldn’t we). CONFETTI CANON! It’s all colourful now…we’re dancing… hard… I feel like I’m a sweaty six year old, dancing in the most magical of bouncey-castles. It may be close to nap time but I’m buzzing from this poppy-sugar-high and you should probably just let me dance around a little more if you’re ever going to put me down to sleep.
The drug of choice for this show shouldn’t be E, or MDMA but Ritalin…Aucoin’s given me dance-party ADD …wait a second… MORE CONFETTI!!! OOOO Glow-sticks I WANT ONE!!!! FOCUS! We’re all dancing under a parachute now… best… gym class… EVER!
…If Dirty Beaches was a petulant stand-off with the crowd, Rich Aucoin was a participatory love-in with artist and viewer coming together (figuratively…) to share a little bit of joy… See for yourself
Yes, this is what it looks like in the middle of our little carnival…you should have been there. …absolute highlight of the festival so far…
Well played Day Three… well played…
… my feet hurt, I’m exhausted, my booty has been shook… but I want more… so much more… Three down, two to go.. BRING IT DAY FOUR!
Further reading from todays line up:
Writer
Dirty Beaches.
Osheaga
Rich Aucoin
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