Lots of people claim, sometimes in an incorrect and hyperbolic manner, that music is their life. But when it comes to Laura Smith, vocalist and keyboardist of the Vancouver-based pop-rock sensation Rococode, music really always has been her life.
“I played piano since I was really little,” she says. “It got to the point where my parents actually had to tell me to stop practising. I think it has always been a thing for me, and I don’t know what I would be doing if I wasn’t doing it.”
All of her hard work has paid off, as Rococode just released their first full-length album, Guns, Sex & Glory. More than anything else, Rococode is a group of friends. At the beginning, Smith was working on a self-titled solo project, and she enlisted the help of Andrew Braun.
“It started with Andrew and myself going to school together,” explains Smith. “I’d been working on a solo project at the time and he was helping me. At first he was just playing guitar with me, and then he was writing all the songs with me. Then one day we thought, ‘We’re pretty much doing it equally, we might as well start a band.’”
Once the band got up and running there was still one more step: coming up with a name. And in a world that has countless bands already, this isn’t an easy feat.
“We spent eight months trying to find a band name. Every band name is taken. Basically we were like, ‘Well, every band name is taken, and we cannot really think of one, so we’ll take some words that we really like and put them together,’” says Smith.
The word “rococo” is a style of art that’s very ornate and elegant, using many different materials to create a delicate effect, which is representative of the band’s pop side. This fuses together with “code,” which represents the underlying twists and turns that are incorporated into their music.
Rococode aspire to travel the world and share their music and have expressed particular interest in branching into the US, Germany, and Japan. But, really, as long as they’re hanging out together and continuing to produce melodic ear candy they’ll be more than content.
“We plan to just keep going, and to grow, and to make our way into new territory,” says Smith. “We’re just hoping for bigger and better as things go on so that we can keep making music that is bigger and better.”
Rococode
April 6, 8 pm
Lucky Bar, $12
atomiqueproductions.com