La Force

La Force is the mesmerizing solo project of Ariel Engle, who has spent more than a decade as one of Canada’s most sought-after musical collaborators. Born and based in Montreal, Engle’s experience reaches from Broken Social Scene’s indie rock to Québecois pop and the experimental avant-garde, culminating in her first two solo records, 2018’s La Force, and the astonishing XO SKELETON, out now.

Engle is the daughter of English-language teachers and her childhood was full of movement—living in China, Scotland and Indonesia; studying in Mandarin and sleeping in Mongolian yurts; attending Javanese puppet and gamelan shows before returning regularly to Quebec. At home in Montreal, her parents owned a massive vinyl collection—at one time, her mother worked at legendary record store Cheap Thrills. One of Engle’s earliest memories is of the voice of Aretha Franklin echoing out from a speaker, and its body-tingling power. 

That’s a power—a force—that would go on to mark all of Engle’s music: the thrilling, magnetic medicine of a singer. She came of age in the buzzy indie scene of Montreal’s Mile End, making music with everyone from Plants & Animals to acclaimed Egyptian-Canadian bandleader Sam Shalabi. She would eventually meet (and marry) musician Andrew Whiteman, with whom she founded the duo AroarA—still one of the country’s best-kept-secrets—and, in 2013, formed a “three-headed” supergroup called Hydra, which featured Engle, Leslie Feist and Snowblink’s Daniela Gesundheit. She also joined Whiteman and Feist as part of the sprawling Broken Social Scene, making her electrifying studio debut on 2017’s Hug of Thunder.  

The following year, Engle released La Force, garnering a Polaris Prize long-list nomination and drawing attention from Stereogum, the Globe & Mail, and NPR’s “Morning Becomes Electric,” as well as The National’s Aaron Dessner, who recruited Engle to appear on the new Big Red Machine LP alongside Bon Iver, Taylor Swift, Fleet Foxes and Sharon Van Etten. Engle was also invited to contribute to recent records by Safia Nolin, one of the most important singer-songwriters in French Canada, and Patrick Watson, who used their collaboration as the lead single on 2022’s Better In The Shade. Meanwhile, Engle has appeared on stage with the likes of Maggie Rogers, Martha Wainwright and the Barr Brothers. 2023 will also see a new release by ALL HANDS_MAKE LIGHT, Engle’s drone/modular synth/voice team-up with Godspeed You! Black Emperor founder Efrim Manuel Menuck. 

For all these nourishing collaborations, “La Force is my baby,” Engle says. This project is at the centre of Engle’s musical practice, and its latest expression is XO SKELETON. Supple, steady and uncanny, the album is a mixture of haunted pop and hot-blooded R&B that glistens at the meeting-point between life, death and love.