ABIGAIL LAPELL’S NEW ALBUM, SHADOW CHILD, ARRIVES MOTHER’S DAY WEEKEND, MAY 8, 2026 VIA OUTSIDE MUSIC
WATCH / SHARE “HAZEL” FT. JILL BARBER HERE
BUY / STREAM “HAZEL” FT. JILL BARBER HERE
PRE-SAVE SHADOW CHILD HERE
NORTH AMERICAN TOUR DATES BEGIN FEBRUARY 26
TICKETS ON SALE HERE
Photo Credit : Jen Squires // DOWNLOAD HIGH-RES
Every mother has a unique story. One thing is true for every mother, though: there’s no deadline quite like a pregnancy. Award-winning Toronto singer-songwriter Abigail Lapell was pregnant with her first child when she booked studio time on Vancouver Island to make an album about motherhood. The nine songs on Shadow Child, one for each month of gestation, had to be ready before then, and her return flight was booked on the last day she could safely fly in her third trimester.
Working with producer Colin Stewart (Dan Mangan, Black Mountain), Lapell finished her songs in the studio and on rural walks beside the Pacific Ocean. She enlisted some of her favourite singers, all British Columbians, all mothers: Frazey Ford, Jill Barber, Pharis Romero. “They’re all people with unique, distinctive voices,” she says, “which is what I’m drawn to.”
Today, Lapell is sharing the first single from the album, “Hazel” featuring Jill Barber. Part lullaby and part elegy, “Hazel” is a gentle love letter to an unborn or future child, or one that may never be. The song’s soft plucked electric guitar floats beneath sweet childhood imagery; sandcastles, snow angels, sunshowers, and a name carried off on the ocean breeze.
The single arrives with a visualizer created by Lapell “using old super 8 footage I filmed as a teenager and recently rediscovered. Shot at a melancholy yet hopeful time in my life, the film features birds in flight and at rest, often shaky, scratchy or out of focus. I feel like this stuttering footage has its own fragile beauty that resonates with the song’s sweet message of a nascent love, half-formed but all-consuming.”
WATCH / SHARE “HAZEL” FT. JILL BARBER HERE
BUY / STREAM “HAZEL” FT. JILL BARBER HERE
MORE ABOUT SHADOW CHILD
For Shadow Child, musically, Lapell was looking for a stark, acoustic sound, as opposed to 2024’s JUNO Award-nominated Anniversary (recorded in Niagara with Great Lake Swimmers’ Tony Dekker) and 2022’s acclaimed Stolen Time (recorded in Montreal with Howard Bilerman, featuring E Street Band saxophonist Jake Clemons).
Lapell’s road to motherhood was fraught, involving years of IVF and a 2023 miscarriage — that she experienced on stage while on tour. (She finished her set.) Her son was born in November 2024. The song cycle of Shadow Child covers joy and loss, using metaphors from Maritime tragedy, “little cannibals,” reproductive health, acquiring language, and lives altered by the arrival of a newborn. The title track refers to ultrasound imaging of “a liminal person that doesn’t quite exist yet,” says Lapell. “Their status is ontologically blurry.”
ABIGAIL LAPELL ON TOUR
Feb 26 - Niagara, ON - Niagara Artists Centre
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
More Dates To Be Announced Soon
PRE-SAVE SHADOW CHILD HERE
SHADOW CHILD TRACKLIST
01 Whistle Song (One In A Million)
02 Hazel ft. Jill Barber
03 Shadow Child ft. Frazey Ford
04 Mocking Bird ft. Dana Sipos
05 Talking To Myself
06 Little Cannibal
07 So Long ft. Pharis Romero
08 Mother Tongue
09 Sing A Rainbow
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