As Hillside festivalgoers filed in to the Island Stage for Rich Aucoin's Saturday night closing set, they were met with a wall of security guards holding down the frontline — a battalion of six-foot dudes stone-facing a melange of kids, seniors, hippies and hipsters. In the minutes before Aucoin began his multimedia set, an exchange between organizers led to the security team relenting whatever notion of risk they had presupposed (was it the raucous NOBRO set just before that spooked them?), and the Haligonian of the hour finally made his way to the stage — vulnerable.
As per tradition, Aucoin began his set with an audio-visual tapestry of metaphysically motivational words and memes, at the forefront of which was the story of Tarra and Bella, an elephant–dog duo who transcended their differences and the bounds of the animal kingdom to become best friends. Therein was the message of the evening, coinciding with the ethos of Hillside itself; all the bullshit that happens outside these fences (political upheaval, climate disaster, housing crises, etc.) can't stop us from caring for and about one another — and our genial host's job was to remind us of the human element that binds us together despite the world trying to rip us apart.
Sandwiched between the dirge of his former era and the next, Aucoin paid service to the artistic body that defined his last decade. A fitting homage to his creative evolution, the musician's recent single "New Nostalgia" — which Aucoin says includes "elements from the last 14 years of recording" — was a spiritual focal point of the set. From there unfurled the hallmarks of his career: "Let It Go," "Want to Believe," "City I Love" (contemporarily spliced with Hillside B-roll), "Four More Years" and "Are You Experiencing?" from 2014's Ephemeral; a particularly interactive rendition of Release's "The Other"; a perfectly placed "Undead"; a literal unfurling of his nearly retired parachute; and, of course, a continual test of one's cardiovascular stamina between all the jumping and squatting demanded of Aucoin's ceaseless crowd interaction, lightbulb forever in hand.
The night ended with a very special interactive karaoke mashup of "Stand by Me" instrumentals and "All Star" lyrics. Probably neither song, not even the more recent, seemed familiar to the mainly teenage participants (despite the apt Shrek visual cues being displayed on-screen), but with Aucoin cosigning, carte blanche, the will to build new cultural memories, the kids' willingness and kinetic involvement would turn out to be an even more profound memory.