Hot on the heels of 2022’s Stolen Time and her most recent Lullabies project, Abigail Lapell turns to the romantic ideal of growing old together on her forthcoming album Anniversary (out on May 10 via Outside Music).
We are reminded that “Anniversary” literally means “returning yearly,” and the album’s 11 songs track the revolving days, seasons and years to celebrate and complicate the notion of eternal love. Lapell drew inspiration from a series of personal milestones, including turning 40, along with the fifteenth anniversary of her father’s death – and, more recently, several weddings and births in the family. She offers a 40-something vision of love, haunted by the ghosts of departed loved ones, past relationships or even the spectre of faded youth.
“I wanted to explore some of the contradictions within the pop culture notion of love,” Lapell says. “These dichotomies of light and dark, love and loss, fleeting and eternal – even in the traditional wedding vows, ‘sickness and health, richer or poorer.’”
She is sharing the video for the title track, “Anniversary Song”, to accompany the announcement. Recorded live with her band in a 200-year-old church, Anniversary Song features an in-house harpsichord along with drums, bass, electric guitar, and layers of doubled vocals and harmonies, brought together with lyrics that celebrate the syntax and symbolism of commitment. Lapell says, “‘Anniversary Song’ was inspired by the idea of mashing-up traditional anniversary gifts (cotton, leather, diamonds) with the periodic table of elements (iron, carbon, silver) to celebrate the physical and symbolic bonds of togetherness.” A play on romantic “chemistry,” “Anniversary Song” highlights some of the album’s recurring dualities: literal and symbolic, earthly and otherworldly.
Lapell enlisted Great Lake Swimmers frontman Tony Dekker as co-producer, his first time producing another artist. “I was intrigued by his approach to recording his own music, using unique locations like a grain silo,” Lapell recalls. Leaving the comfort zone of a traditional studio paid off: “St. Mark’s was such an inspiring, resonant space, with sunlight streaming through vaulted stained-glass windows. We’d record late into the night, with the lights down low, which gave the sessions an intimate, haunted feeling.”
Anniversary Tracklist:
1. Anniversary Song
2. Footsteps
3. Count On Me (feat. Great Lake Swimmers)
4. Rattlesnake
5. Blue Blaze
6. Someone Like You
7. 3am
8. Flowers In My Hair (feat. Great Lake Swimmers)
9. Blue Electric Skies
10. Wait Up
11. Stars (feat. Great Lake Swimmers)
US Tour Dates:
May 30 Northampton, MA @ Parlor Room
May 31 Saratoga Springs, NY @ Caffe Lena
June 1 Cambridge, MA @ Club Passim
June 2 Exeter, NH @ The Wordbarn
June 4 Portland, ME @ Oxbow
June 5 New Haven, CT @ Cafe Nine
June 6 New York, NY @ Cafe Wha?
June 10 Pittsburgh, PA @ Club Cafe