REVIEW: Abigail Lapell Sings Her Way to Motherhood, plus a Rockabilly Anthology

Abigail Lapell Sings Her Way to Motherhood, plus a Rockabilly Anthology

Sometimes a whisper can pack more punch than a shout. Witness, for example, the music of Nick Drake—or the similarly understated folk recordings of Abigail Lapell, whose atmospheric work might also occasionally remind you of Pentangle, Fairport Convention, or early Donovan.

The Toronto-based singer, whose acclaimed prior LPs include Great Survivor (2011), Hide nor Hair (2017), Getaway (2018), Stolen Time 2022), and Anniversary (2024), has previously written about subjects ranging from Donald Trump’s Muslim ban and destructive relationships to nature and death. Now, on the new Shadow Child, she turns entirely inward for a soft-spoken standout about her journey to motherhood.

Recorded while Lapell was pregnant with her first child, the CD contains nine melodic selections—one for each month of gestation. “Whistle Song,” the lead-off number, is about “beating the odds and finding small miracles in the everyday,” she says in a press release. The title track, meanwhile, concerns ultrasound imaging of a person “who doesn’t quite exist yet.” The final cut, the album’s only non-original, is the old children’s song, “I Can Sing a Rainbow,” by the late Arthur Hamilton.

As the press release notes, “Lapell’s road to motherhood was fraught, involving years of IVF and a 2023 miscarriage.” But Lapell is as intrepid as she is talented. She suffered the miscarriage onstage and went on to finish her set. And when making the new CD, she booked a flight home from a Vancouver recording studio on the last day it was safe to fly in her third trimester. Years earlier, she bicycled her way through a concert tour and arrived at other shows on a canoe.

The acoustic Shadow Child is a bit more stripped down than Lapell’s earlier efforts, but she plays guitars, piano, keyboards, accordion, and harmonica, and, on a few tracks, other musicians add congas, cello, bass, and theremin. Her own vocals would be enough to sustain this affecting set, but she garners backing on four tracks from a few of her favorite Canadian female singers—Frazey Ford, Pharis Romero, Jill Barber, and Dana Sipos.

An Anthology Unearths Rare Rockabilly

That’ll Flat … Git It! Vol. 55: Rockabilly & Rock ‘n’ Roll from the Vaults of Fortune, Hi-Q, & Strate 8 Records offers another reminder that there were far more wild rockers in the late 1950s than many people realize. The number in the multi-artist album’s title is no typo. This is indeed the 55^th volume in the Bear Family label’s seemingly endless series on early rockabilly and rock and roll, much of it consisting of rare recordings from small, independent regional companies.

This 28-track latest edition focuses on Detroit-based Fortune and its Hi-Q and Strate 8 subsidiaries. The husband-and-wife operation, which they set up behind a record shop, made little, if any, mark on national charts, but it should have, thanks to its adventurous catalog of rockabilly, R&B, doo-wop, and more. An excellent house band, featuring guitarist and former hillbilly singer Eddie Jackson, shows up on many of the tracks. Most of the material dates from 1956 through 1959, though there are a few numbers from the early 1960s and two super oldies: “Dirty Boogie,” from 1949, by Appalachian pianist Roy Hall and his Cohutta Mountain Boys, and “Hamtramck Mama,” from 1939, by the York Brothers, two siblings who spent 40 years in country music but dabbled memorably in rockabilly.

The frenetic “Rock the Universe,” by a singer named Dell Vaughn, opens the set in high gear. That’s one of at least three numbers here to reference the contemporaneous space race, the others being “Gonna Ride That Satellite” by Jimmy Gartin with the Highlanders, and “Gonna Get Me a Satellite” by Little Ernest Tucker. It’s also one of several songs that celebrate the music itself, along with “Crazy Bop,” by the Earthquakes with the Rhythm Kings, “Rock and Roll Grandpap,” by Don Rader, and “Honey Let’s Go (To a Rock n Roll Show),” by Johnny Powers & His Rockets. A 1957 number by a singer named Pete De Bree tips a hat to the nation’s hottest rocker in “Hey Mr. Presley,” while a 1960 track from the Hunt Sisters lauds his return from military service in “Elvis Is Rocking Again.”

A 36-page booklet features a history of the Fortune label and information about every track. It’s impressively detailed, though a few typos and inconsistencies show up. Singer Kenny Layne, for example, is named in one place in the booklet as Kenny Lane, and in the CD’s metadata, he’s Kenny Land. But whatever you call him and the rest of the artists here, one thing is clear: they all knew how to rock.