Regardless of the providence, Canada and its vast countryside has always made for wonderfully nuanced folk music, be it through Joni Mitchell, Neil Young, or the late Leonard Cohen. Toronto’s Abigail Lapell has been carefully creating her own legacy of modern folk, threading a needle between dark and bucolic. Lapell first showed off her pipes on 2011’s Great Survivor and further rooted her multi-instrumental talents on both 2017’s Hide nor Hair and 2019’s Getaway.
For her upcoming fourth LP Stolen Time, Lapell’s masterful skills on finger-style guitar, harmonica, piano once again return to effortlessly complement her eerily beautiful vocals. Abigail Lapell’s going to be in town for SXSW on Wednesday, March 16th, and shares Stolen Time on April 22nd. So make the most of Stolen Time‘s two preceding singles between now and then by discovering what ‘Canadiana prairie noir’ means to you. Hint hint, the crawling groove and dynamic range of “Ships” (and its accompanying music video) is a damned good representation, both stylistically and performance-wise.
–Jack Anderson
