Helena Deland - Eternity Shrugs Helena Deland

Helena Deland’s debut album Someone New was released on Luminelle Recording in 2020, introducing a new and resonant voice to the indie music scene. Three years later, she published the acclaimed Goodnight Summerland, with label and longtime collaborators Chivi Chivi. In parallel, she explored new soundscapes with Hildegard, her collaborative project with fellow Montreal musician Ouri. Together, they released two albums, 2021’s Hildegard and 2024’s Jour 1596. She has also worked with other renowned artists, collaborating with Men I Trust, JPEGMAFIA, Jonah Yano, Sam Evian, and claire rousay amongst others. Will Oldham notably shared a video of himself performing ‘The Animals’ this past April, a song of Helena’s which originally appeared on Goodnight Summerland.

After opening for the likes of Weyes Blood, Andy Shauf, Connan Mockasin, Soccer Mommy and Iggy Pop, Helena toured Goodnight Summerland across North America and Europe. This September, Helena presented her new songs on stage for a short and intimate slate of solo shows with Hana Stretton.

Montreal’s Helena Deland announces her upcoming album Eternity Shrugs, due for release 22 January on Chivi Chivi. The album announcement is accompanied by the resonant, beautifully fraught, shimmering anthem ‘Tip of My Tongue’.

Helena shares: “I’m thinking of a long-awaited, momentous run-in, the kind that has kept a part of the mind alert. Maybe you need to privately navigate how up-to-date on the other person’s life you’ve remained since the last time you spoke, or maybe you know a former version of them so well that the present-day one feels entirely, surprisingly familiar. The song was arranged with that feeling of familiarity in mind, like something that has been on the tip of my tongue for a long time.”

‘Tip of My Tongue’ follows the September single and album opener ‘How Do You Like Me Now’, which Stereogum called “quick, curious, and elegant," upon its release, and The FADER named it one of their Songs You Need In Your Life This Week, saying: “The song becomes an exploration of the pain and beauty of full discretion, sung softly over rich piano and soft drums."

Helena recently joined her friend Hana Stretton for a handful of solo North American shows this past September, and plans to embark on EU, UK, and North American headline dates following the album release next year.

Deland’s third solo album follows the electronic density of Someone New (2020) and the grief-shadowed folk of Goodnight Summerland (2023). Recorded in rural Quebec in bursts over four seasons, Eternity Shrugs was produced by Deland with longtime bandmates Francis Ledoux and Alexandre Larin, as well as musicians Lysandre Ménard and Cedric Martel who have played with the band for years. Piano, bass, organ, Rhodes, viola, and woodwinds gather around her voice and guitar in patient arrangements anchored by finely textured percussion; the songs can feel spare one moment and subtly ornate the next.

Opening track ‘How Do You Like Me Now’ describes an act of trespass. At a party, Helena Deland slips toward the edge of the room; no one sees her as she eyes a notebook which belongs to the party’s host. She insists she would never read it, then lets herself imagine being caught, only to learn that its owner had wanted to be discovered all along. The journal becomes a mirror of songwriting: private processing made public and left to the interpretations of strangers.

Near the record’s centre, the piano-lit ‘Room’ blooms with an external voice addressing Deland in the second person, a returning motif that allows one of the album’s characters to speak back to its author. In ‘Great Dreams’, a meteor shower and an easy silence widen into cinema through 1960s-era strings and a bass line that glances toward Lee Hazlewood, while Montreal contemporary Cindy Lee flickers at the edge of the frame. Deland imagines the album’s palette in browns: wood, leather, smoke. Warm and inhabited, the music never entirely settles.

‘Where I Stand’, inspired by seeing Lucinda Williams perform at the Winnipeg Folk Festival, turns the infinite into a missed call: eternity spins Deland across an empty dance floor, then shrugs and hangs up. The closing ‘Here on the Page’ returns to the furtive notebook, asking what becomes of experience if it is not written down, though with its slow and dirge-like gravity, suggests that even words committed to paper remain vulnerable to time. Deland leaves these private traces in public anyway, hoping to hold what is passing and to see who might meet her there.