“weightless notes and melodies that pierce our hearts…. somewhere between Gillian Welch and Laura Veir.” –Rolling Stone

Toronto songwriter and multi-instrumentalist Abigail Lapell returns with Anniversary, an evocative collection of original love songs. Produced with Great Lake Swimmers’ Tony Dekker, the album was recorded at 200-year-old St Mark’s Church in Niagara-on-the-Lake, Ontario. Dekker helped shape the sessions’ spooky, resonant sound and also lent his voice to a couple of spellbinding duets.

Lapell’s deft lyrics jostle with love song tropes, grappling with love’s finitude and the irony of how codependency and longing are revered in popular music. A ghost story is woven through the album: waltzing in the dusty barroom country of “Blue Blaze,” buried in the superstitious lyrical streak of “Rattlesnake” and audible in a wheezing organ as it shuts down at the end of “Footsteps.” Still, Anniversary emerges as an earnest celebration of commitment. Earworms like “Anniversary Song” and “Someone Like You” showcase intricately layered harmonies, while closer “Stars” affirms that there’s no place the speaker would rather be than with the one she loves.

Lapell has garnered three Canadian Folk Music Awards, hit number one on Canadian folk radio and reached a staggering 40 million + streams on Spotify.