Photo Credit: Jen Squires
Celebrated songwriter Abigail Lapell’s new LP ‘Stolen Time’ strikes a fine balance between her hushed acoustic debut, ‘Great Survivor’, and her two rockier, Chris Stringer produced records, ‘Hide Nor Hair’ and ‘Getaway’.
Stolen Time brings a live-off-the-floor 70s folk-rock vibe with more structural experimentation to the table on songs that feel expansive in their scope – unhurried, psychedelic, and other-worldly.
Lapell’s band underscores and meets the power of her vocals on songs like ‘Ships’, a wild sax solo seemingly enticing her higher and louder to meet the crashing waves.
But many of Stolen Time’s standout tracks are solo acoustic guitar songs, backed by little more than Lapell’s harmonica, pump organ, or accordion.
‘Old Flames’, with Lapell’s melodic fingerstyle guitar mimicking flickering embers, an answer song to Bruce Springsteen’s ‘I’m On Fire’ and the swirling and woozy ‘Scarlet Fever’ was inspired by an elderly relative’s tales of being quarantined as a child.
‘Land Of Plenty’ was influenced by Lapell’s family history of escaping the Holocaust by immigrating from Eastern Europe to North America, as well as more recent immigration stories.
In celebration of the album’s release, Abigail reveals the brand new video for ‘All Dressed Up’.
Filmed in Austin during SXSW with local filmmaker Max Conrus, Abigail says, “It was my first time at Southby, and first time out on the road in quite a while, so it was super fun getting to capture the early days of Spring and visit some iconic Austin sightseeing spots.
I love the contrast of the glitchy vintage TV set against these natural landscapes, which kind of mirrors the contradictions of the song: ‘all dressed up’ is a fever dream of isolation and claustrophobia, circumscribed by all these obsolete media machines — but with a semi-hopeful note, too, about making the best of an absurd situation, or at least, ‘this too shall pass’. And Spring will come again”.
