The consensus regarding Elizabeth Shepherd’s recently released The Signal is that it’s her best work yet—and although the jazz-rooted vocalist says she’s uncomfortable singing her own praises, she doesn’t disagree.

“It is sort of the sum total of everything that had come before,” Shepherd explains, reached at home in Montreal shortly after returning from a Mexican vacation. “The previous albums, in some way, were attempts at arriving at my voice—and I feel like I really have arrived with The Signal.

“That said,” she quickly adds, “I’m working on two new albums right now, and they are not continuations of The Signal: they’re something different. So I feel there’s a certain danger in saying ‘This is it,’ because you sort of paint yourself into a corner. There always has to be room for change and growth and exploration.”

Part of Shepherd’s own growth involves moving away from the “navel-gazing” introversion of her earlier material towards a greater engagement with the world. “Lion’s Den” draws on the true story of a young Ethiopian girl rescued from rapists by three lionesses. “I Gave” meditates on how the Catholic nun Mother Teresa continued to alleviate suffering even while enduring a serious crisis of faith. “B.T. Cotton”, meanwhile, looks at farmer suicides linked to the use of genetically modified seed.

“I grew up in the Salvation Army, and so for me music has always been a dual experience of spiritual exploration and a vehicle for the Salvation Army’s mandate, which has sort of a social-justice angle,” Shepherd says. “And I feel that, in making peace with my upbringing, music has come to represent those things again. It’s a vehicle for spiritual expression, and a way of feeling like I am doing something more than just making something, hopefully, of beauty—that I’m also contributing, in some way, to making things better.”

Shepherd’s musicality has also deepened: she plays spare, Herbie Hancock–influenced electric piano all over the new record, while singing with more flair and freedom than before. And remember the two albums the singer said she was working on? Well, there are actually three of them, part of a conceptually adventurous exploration of urban life.

“Now that I’ve realized that I’m going to do this for the rest of my life, I’m thinking long-term,” Shepherd says. “So I’m working on a trilogy, and each unit of the trilogy takes place in a different city, with the first one being my city of Montreal. I’ve always been inspired by the architecture here, and thought it would be interesting to interview people who have some relationship to places, be it a building or a landmark or a street, and ask them about their stories and how they pertain to these places. So I’m sort of arriving at this picture of Montreal as told by its people.”

After that, Shepherd plans to explore New York City and Paris, while also probing new ways to activate and animate her music. The Montreal record, for instance, will be keyed to an hourlong walking tour of the city: “The idea is that you can put these earbuds in that normally separate you from the outside world,” she says, “and then you’re actually connecting to that space, and learning about it through this recorded medium.”

For her Manhattan record, Shepherd plans to collaborate with a host of her favourite New York drummers, perhaps taking a more dance-friendly approach. And Paris?

“Oh, that one isn’t fleshed out yet,” Shepherd says, laughing. “But I have years before I have to!”

Elizabeth Shepherd plays the Cultch on Thursday (April 2).