Gig: Everything All The Time

Everything All The Time (Lioness / Rich Aucoin)

The Horseshoe. Saturday, January 30, 2010.

On a frigid Saturday night, I tried warming myself up with the strange flaming sculptures in Nathan Phillips Square, but to no avail. Needing something generating a more powerful heat, I walked down the street to this dance-y evening at the 'Shoe, another smartly-concocted No Shame event. Once again, Lauren Schreiber had gotten a nice crowd out — and an early one, too, with more bodies on hand than you might normally see when the first act started.¹ That might be because it was, as one of the performers would later put it, almost like a triple-headliner kind of show — in fact, it was mildly unusual in that the night's sets went from longest to shortest.

You could tell that something interesting was coming with Rich Aucoin², who, as I arrived, was busily hanging a blanket across the front of the stage-right area. Soon, balloons were being passed around to members of the crowd to be blown up and deposited behind the screen. When everything was ready to go, Aucoin started his set by calling everyone closer to the stage, and forming into a big circle around him on the floor. Now, artists do this all the time, but this was done with such persuasive "we're all in this show together" earnestness that he indeed soon had an impressively-sized group around him. Aucoin was fully committed to creating an interactive experience: "at some points during the show, expressing yourself through song and dance isn't enough and confetti is the only way to get your point across. So if you'd like to step forward, I will distribute these packets of to anyone who wants to express themselves through confetti."

Beyond the props were the video projections, with the songs designed to sync up, of all things, with scenes from Dr. Seuss' How the Grinch Stole Christmas, cut with stock footage and with pop-up sing-along lyrics. None of these extras would matter much if the songs didn't measure up, but Aucoin brought a pleasing batch of well-delivered DOR confections. With "here's how to sing the chorus of this one" intros and groove-pleasing centres, the songs stretched out like dancefloor-friendly 12" mixes, most stretching out to six or seven minutes.³ Aucoin's voice brought Win Butler to mind a little, nowhere more than on the anthemic "It". All the way along, he was helped along by the rhythm section, backstopped by Taylor Knox (of The Golden Dogs, plus his own band) on drums, that brought live energy to what could have been a stiffer kind of sequencer rock. On the final song, all of those balloons were sent out to the crowd and were soon ping-ponging back and forth in imitation of the brownian motion below them on the dancefloor. If there's any knock to be made on this stuff, it's that with it so tightly integrated to the backing tracks and the videos, it might feel less fresh a second time around, but Aucoin has undoubtedly come up with something seeing once.⁴

Listen to a track from this set here.

In picking this gig, perhaps the biggest appeal of the night for me was a chance to catch up with Lioness, who I hadn't seen since October '08, when they were releasing their self-titled EP. The trio is fronted by Vanessa Fischer (ex-No Dynamics) along with the ex-controller.controller rhythm section of Jeff Scheven and Ronnie Morris. The band's sound is an aggressively soulful death disco laced with bass-heavy maximalist reverberations that work like subliminal dancefloor invocations. Or as Fischer put it, on coming out after the arms-raising optimism of the previous set, "sorry, we're a little darker — it's in our hearts".

The early peak was an ace version of "You're My Heart", featuring Joseph Shabason (of the night's headliners) on saxophone, but the rest of the material was right up there as well. The set included a "really new song" that shows the band extending themselves towards a slightly more subtle place, slower and with less bass and more keybs played with pulsing intensity. Another new one, "Fire Walk With You", featured Shabason's sax matched to a "Personal Jesus"-indebted rhythm stomp. The band went forth into the night after closing with "The Night", bringing the forty minute set to a satisfying close. Good stuff, and it sounds like the band is working on new material that'll dispel any rumours that they're mere one-dimensional hi-hat rocking one-trick-ponies.

Listen to a track from this set here.

Although I had heard the name Everything All the Time being tossed around, I hadn't made any effort to seek them out before seeing some nice pieces online in the leadup to this show. As promised, the six-piece appeared on stage in a flying V formation, with no less than four keyboards radiating outward from Kieran Adams' drum kit. And in the centre of it all, striding onto the stage with fierce confidence, was vocalist Alanna Stuart. The band's stock-in-trade is soulful 80's-style dance pop — if these tunes were sent through a timewarp to a typical episode of Video Hits, they'd fit in without anyone batting an eye.

As with fellow local revivalists The Magic, this kind of music sometimes makes me feel vaguely suspicious, setting off all kinds of associations with the vapid mersh music of my youth. Because I worked hard to get past all this stuff, now I have to work a little to be able to just enjoy the pure pop pleasures of a song like "Telephone Conversation", which sounds like it mighta been a chart topper for Whitney Houston in some alternate universe. Or to not be looking for the irony in a statement like "that was our tribute to Boney M," as Stuart said after "Those Eyes". But, both of those are fine songs, and the charismatic presence that Stuart brings to the stage sells the band extremely well. As I was getting onto the streetcar after the show, the women behind me were also discussing her virtues: "She can dance without looking silly, she knows what to do with her hands," one said, adding, "and she's got a good voice." So, yeah — good songs, an entertaining time and you can dance to it, so go and check 'em out.

Listen to a track from this set here.

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¹ There is also a sort of built-in crowd that just seems to go to the 'Shoe by default, to hang out there regardless of who's playing. For a good while, I was standing behind this knot of vaguely biker-y middle-aged dudes pounding back the Buds, holding down a patch of space near the front of the crowd — like just in case all this dance-rock folderol was a put-on and maybe Blue Cheer would be making a surprise appearance or something.

² For those like me with a partial recall for names, I will note that Rich Aucoin is not to be confused with his older brother Paul, leader of The Hylozoists and seen on the stage with many other local bands — including this one, where he was playing bass.

³ Only a stab at Daft Punk's "Human After All" clocked in at under four minutes.

⁴ Or, apparently, more than once. A comment from Rich, below, brings up the fact that he's thinking two steps ahead of me here, and is making new "mixes and videos every month so that it's a different show for the folks who come back to see it again [...] trying to do everything i can to make it a new experience each time." So you can see (and hear) something different when he makes his way back into town again over the next couple months. I would especially draw your attention to his show with Japanther at the Whippersnapper Gallery on March 11th — I'm guessing that this might be one of the last shows put on there before that space shuts down.