Following last month’s announcement of her forthcoming album Shadow Child and first single Hazel, Abigail Lapell has now shared the album’s title track, featuring guest vocalist Frazey Ford (The Be Good Tanyas).
Where Hazel drifted on soft, plucked electric guitar, Shadow Child is driven by sparse acoustic and baritone guitars, with Ford’s unmistakable voice harmonising alongside Lapell’s and a theremin woven through the arrangement. The song’s lyrics address the unborn as a liminal presence, drawing on ultrasound imagery. “Their status is ontologically blurry,” Lapell said.
The single arrives with a stop-motion animation video that Lapell herself “made years ago, about a figure creating another figure out of clay,” she says. “It was shot in one ‘take’, all in camera, and filmed backwards — so that, when played in reverse, it shows the creature emerging from a formless blob.
“I recently found all my old Super 8 films, and I thought this odd little black and white claymation might fit well with Shadow Child, a song about pregnancy and childbirth — creation and transformation.
“But when I actually tried pairing the two, it was crazy. The unedited ‘backwards’ visuals fit the song exactly perfectly — like down to the second. Complete with the final reveal of the figure’s shadow, and then my own hands in silhouette, returning it to a formless blob. I couldn’t believe it. Even the unintended strobe effect from my camera’s ‘shutter ghosting’; it kind of reminds me of the flickering of an ultrasound.
“So this video feels like a really wild collaboration with my much younger self. And a celebration of the oddness of ‘creation’, in both senses — as an artist and, now, as a mother.”
Shadow Child is out May 8th via Outside Music. Recorded on Vancouver Island with producer Colin Stewart, its nine songs each represent a month of gestation, featuring Ford, Jill Barber, and Pharis Romero as guest vocalists. As we noted in our coverage of Hazel, Lapell sought a stark, acoustic sound for the album, a departure from the warmer production textures of her JUNO Award-nominated Anniversary.
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Abigail Lapell Tour Dates
Tickets: https://abigaillapell.com/tour
April 10 – Saint John, NB – Imperial Theatre
May 8 – Richards Landing, ON – Algoma Trad
May 14 – Saratoga Springs, NY – Caffe Lena
May 15 – Exeter, NH – Word Barn
May 16 – Cambridge, MA – Club Passim
May 17 – New York, NY – Cafe Wha?
May 22 – Toronto, ON – Hugh’s Room
May 23 – Chelsea, ON – Motel Chelsea
May 24 – Ottawa, ON – Ottawa Tennis Club
August 7-9 – Red Rock ON – Live from the Rock Folk Festival
More Dates To Be Announced Soon