Heartbreak may be the greatest subject of songs, even more so than love, but that does mean that the listener can feel like they’ve heard this one before. How do you make people remember your particular heartache? Ariel Engle does just that with her heartbreaking XO SKELETON.
Just about every song on SKELETON is a sad one, but as we all learned over the years (particularly the last few years), tragedy can come in many different forms. There’s the killer intimacy of “how do you love a man” (“Who doesn’t know that you love him?” – QRO review), but also the world-weary slow collapse of “empty sympathy”. “xo skeleton” is conversationally tragic, while “ouroboros” is the sad story of experiencing the same sad story over & over again.
Stepping even more into her own from out of her days in Broken Social Scene, Engle’s heartbreak is written all over this record (so much so, one hopes everything’s okay with her & hubby Andrew Whiteman of BSS…), in her own memorable ways.
