Montreal-based AroarA are sharing their latest single “#13” available on their debut LP release, In The Pines, available August 19, 2014 on Club Roll Music. The duo is made up of Andrew Whiteman (Broken Social Scene / Apostle of Hustle) and Ariel Engle.

Having started out last year by performing with Martha Wainwright both opening her shows and as part of her band and then closing out the year by touring across Canada. Now, with In the Pines available digitally, on CD and deluxe limited edition vinyl, Club Roll is gearing up for the album’s release in The United States.

Listen and share “#13” here. 

The In the Pines full length is equally inspired, brooding, visceral and haunting as their EP; sometimes brightly lit while at other times, lost in shadow. Based on the work of avant-garde American poet, Alice Notley and her much-admired book of poetry, In The Pines first published in 2007, AroarA’s new album of the same name relates the spiritual and visionary experiences of a woman undergoing a cure for Hepatitis C, while being racked by Depression-era visions. Notley’s book is laced with quotations from gospel, folk and blues music of that period; her song fragments along with the powerful imagery throughout the poems, inspired AroarA to transform the work into music.

With Alice Notley’s permission, AroarA recorded fourteen songs corresponding to the fourteen poems in the book. They used the words from each poem to make faux-folk song forms and then added beats, melodies, and vintage sounds to create their debut full-length record entitled, In the Pines. Their music is not easily compared. It leaves you with the uncanny feeling of something both equally familiar and foreign.

The first time Andrew read Ariel “In the Pines”, she exclaimed,
“If Alice Notley was church, we’d go.”

In the Pines was recorded in various living rooms across Canada and mixed (impeccably and minimally) by Sandro Perri (Constellation Records).