AroarA’s brief life made a powerful mark with the spellbinding In the Pines. August 27, 2023, marks the enigmatic album’s tenth anniversary.
The year is 2014, and AroarA’s In the Pines (released the year before in 2013) has already become a part of my being. Each song is imprinted in my memory, a unique collaboration between Andrew Whiteman and Ariel Engle. I read an unusual Exclaim! story: AroarA will release a sophomore album… in a year’s time. Not the usual press cycle, but so be it: I was hungry for more of their music. It was to be inspired by the tarot, and it was to be called La Force. If you’re a keen-eyed observer of the Broken Social Scene universe, you may realize that La Force eventually became the name for Engle’s solo project. Not only did AroarA never release another album, In the Pines was removed from the internet!
This is all a long way of saying nothing good can last. In the Pines was pure magic put to tape, a seamless interplay between two extraordinary musicians. It is technically two recordings, a self-titled EP released in 2012 and the nine-song full-length that came out ten years ago. The 14 songs correspond to the 14 poems in Alice Notley’s book of the same name, with certain phrases from each poem inspiring the music and words surrounding them in song. The book chronicles an Aboriginal woman undergoing treatment for hepatitis C, and her emotional journey brings her mind between the realms of the living and the dead.
The premise is heady, and Whiteman and Engle handle it carefully. There are so many minor instrumental moments that float in and out and leave a lasting impression: an intermittent gong of a bell on the piano-driven “#14”; a deep, bass-like warping in the background of the dreamlike “#3”; the thumping drums later in the blistering “#12.” Atypical phrases leave the listener pondering: “No cathedral can hold this song,” Engle sings in the funereal “#10.” A scratchy drum track anchors the surprisingly catchy “#9” as Whiteman sings, “I’ve got to get past the people, need to be with the spirits / I’m covered with human spirits in my pockets and shoes.”
The interplay between Engle and Whiteman is what makes In the Pines so special. It’s hard to know where one musician ends, and the other begins, like on “#4,” propelled forward by jagged guitars and especially raw, furious vocals from Engle. Towards the end, Engle and Whiteman’s voices combine as they sing of a universe decaying. The two flit between strength and softness on “#7,” with softer guitar contrasting Engle’s more robust vocals and Whiteman’s gentler vocals contrasting the images of closets on fire in his lyrics.
And these are just moments from the LP. Including the EP as part of the full In the Pines experience gives you genuinely transcendent moments, like the epic “#11.” What starts with brash sounds quickly becomes a ritual as Engle sings, “Casting a spell of protection…” Whiteman marches in a parade of arcane similes and metaphors on “#5,” another highlight of the duo’s hypnotic guitar that permeates the album.
The fever dream the woman in the poems experiences mirrors the fever dream that was AroarA: they were a short, powerful burst of creativity that has since evaporated to the fringes of the internet.
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