‘Pines’ and ‘Ships’ are the first two singles from the forthcoming album by Toronto songwriter and multi-instrumentalist Abigail Lapell on Outside Music. Titled Stolen Time, the record promises to see Lapell continue her distinctive brand of Canadiana, drawing on the natural world in all of its power and delicate beauty. Falling somewhere between acoustic debut Great Survivor and its two rockin’ sequels (Hide Nor Hair and Getaway), the album is built on solid 70s folk rock foundations while retaining the freedom to get experimental and expansive.
The singles display different sides of this balance. ‘Pines’ is a piano-led folk song that has all the stillness and tranquillity of the breaking dawn. Written during a Rocky Mountain songwriting residency, it is steeped in the imagery of the mountains, that sense of raw reconnection that comes with wild rivers and starry skies and the smell of woodsmoke riding the breeze.
Walk through the pines,
down the mountain, follow the signs
Shadow birds circle slow,
high above the power lines
Listen to the song below, accompanied by an animated video by Tatiana Vaca.
Follow-up single ‘Ships’ is altogether more tumultuous, physically evoking the turbulent ocean as a metaphor for storms more personal. As Lapell says, it’s a song about “leaving versus staying, quitting versus relapsing—familiar shores and uncharted waters,” and this uncertain dichotomy manifests musically too. Things begin relatively calm, a subdued but potent drums ‘n guitar folk rocker. But it’s not long before it billows outward from within in squally bursts, adding layered vocal melodies, horns, and even a killer sax solo. It all comes together with a sense of immediacy and intuition, the feeling each element meshed into the whole not so much through careful planning but via a process more natural and instinctive.
The song’s video, recorded at hotel2tango recording studio in Montreal, captures this process as it happened. Check it out below:
Stolen Time comes out this Spring via Outside Music. Head to the Abigail Lapell Bandcamp page to pre-order.
Photo by Jen Squires