Concert Review: La Force (Opening for Caroline Rose) @ 9:30 Club (4/13/24)

‘The audiences at a Caroline Rose show are always the most welcoming!’ – La Force

La Force lit up the 9:30 Club crowd with a fine opening set for Caroline Rose’s April 13th show. It was impressive how many showed up to support the opener, maybe since it was a late show (doors at 10pm), for some they may have been eager for the concert. Yet no one left thinking that their early arrival was a mistake.

I witnessed La Force open at Union Stage last December, and was impressed enough to want to catch her live again. Plus she was opening for Caroline Rose, who landed on my top concerts for 2023 at #8, so this seemed like a match made in DC*.

La Force is Ariel Engle from Montreal, Canada, and for this show she had one musician on drums and keyboard in support. She is still touring for her second solo album, XO SKELETON (via Secret City Records), released last September. She played three songs from the new album, of the seven total in the opening set. She started her solo career in 2018, with her self-titled debut album, La Force, and was also among the long-time vocalists of the Canadian rock band, Broken Social Scene.

She opened with “Risk”, a song about ‘breaking up with a friend’, and next performed “october” from XO Skeleton, a song I thoroughly enjoyed last December, and this time was no different. There was projector screen directly behind Ariel, and images and colors moved and changed for each song, here the white letters X.O. boldly displayed on a blue background. The song seemingly speaks to no matter the extent of our powerful feelings, we are still like other animals, on the same journey of life and death. Our feelings towards and interactions with other people in life and death shape who we are. Great song.

To break the ice, Ariel gave the crowd a kudos (see opening quote), and then joked that ‘her and Caroline rub titties every night’ and ‘that you (the crowd) love it’ while on tour. At one point, Caroline dropped in and performed a few riffs, before peacing out with a smile.

With “Protection”, Ariel said she hasn’t released it yet and described its meaning as ‘the desire to protect those that you love’. The projector displayed the image of a women dripping with melting goo, likely paint.

During “ouroboros”, the final song she performed from XO SKELETON, with the back drop of a writhing snake, Ariel began pulling the red strips out of her red dress one by one, until the dress was entirely gone and only a snake skin outfit remained. This slinky R&B flavored song is about the many cyclical emotions of breaking up with someone, where you almost feel like you are a snake eating its tail.

The final song was “#14”, a cover of AroarA, a music project Ariel and her husband, Andrew Whiteman (also of Broken Social Scene), did about 10 years ago. The two ‘A’s’ stand for their names.

Having been gifted with an entertaining opener, the 9:30 Club crowd waited in happy anticipation for the next part of the late night journey.

I last saw Caroline Rose at the 9:30 Club in April of 2023, and the stage setup had a similar feel, with screens hanging from bath hooks that changed colors and displayed different images. The background part of this show was as dramatic as last year, but Caroline’s singing performance was even better. Which is hard to do, given how great it was in 2023.

Give XO SKELETON a listen (why not just buy it?), and be on the look out for the next show with La Force. Hopefully, it will be of the headlining variety.

Setlist