Kipp Boucher

Photograph by Stef Martin

Words by Neve Dawson

Kipp Boucher has announced their signing to Opus-Kink’s Hideous Mink Records, offering all listeners a track with touches of retro, yet simultaneously brand-spanking new. Working with his supporting band The CurrentFantasy instrumentalist sections bring the track and Boucher’s Americana vocals to life. 

The 27-year-old returns after two years in songwriting solitude, working away at the new EP ‘Joy of Life’. Boucher seamlessly combines classic orchestral soft-rock with lamentations of the mundane and frivolous. As soon as the play button is hit, ghosts of the past such as Harry Nilsson come to sit at the table opposite the likes of Gen Z starboy Father John Misty. 

“I wanted it to sound like a Nilsson ballad, which lent itself to these stacked vocals and TV orchestra strings. The music and lyrics kind of take flight together; up into this cloud cuckoo land and back down again and I feel this oscillation is all over this EP.”

Whether the track is blaring through the speakers of your Crosley or your crusty headphones, it’s virtually impossible to not imagine Boucher behind a dusty, grand piano crooning into the darkness, surrounded by in-bloom red roses brandished onto the stage by beehive-adorned groupie wannabes. ‘Joy of Life’ makes a perfect jukebox slow-dance song to be paired with a sloshing glass of red wine by candlelight.