Helena Deland

Helena Deland announces new album ‘Goodnight Summerland’ out 13th October on Chivi Chivi and UK/EU tour dates for 2024. She is sharing the video for new single ‘Bright Green Vibrant Gray’.

Here's welcoming back acclaimed Montreal-based songwriter and musician Helena Deland, with the announcement of her new album 'Goodnight Summerland' out 13th October on Chivi Chivi. Today also sees the announcement of an extensive UK and European tour for 2024, full details are below.

'Bright Green Vibrant Gray' is Helena’s third single released with Montreal label and longtime collaborators Chivi Chivi, following 2022's 'Swimmer' and 2023’s 'Spring Bug' which also appear on 'Goodnight Summerland'. The atmospheric, charming video for 'Bright Green Vibrant Gray' was directed by Xavier Beldor, depicting Deland going on a painting expedition through the deep snow in Charlevoix, Quebec.

Helena Deland is interested in how songs can hold what eludes everyday language. Her music draws on reading and walking around. 'Goodnight Summerland' was recorded with Sam Evian at Flying Cloud Recordings in the Catskill mountains. It was engineered by Sam, co-produced by Helena and Sam and mastered by Heba Kadry (Bjork, Beach House, Slowdive). Deland's new songs have simpler musical arrangements than 2020's dream pop debut 'Someone New', focussing on the sheer joy and transformative power of a good song and inspired by Joni Mitchell and Vashti Bunyan.

Over to Helena to explain about the making of 'Goodnight Summerland' and the new single in her own words:

“I am thrilled to announce my second album 'Goodnight Summerland' with the release of the song ‘Bright Green Vibrant Gray.’ I wrote the song thinking of a trip I took to a town on the St. Lawrence River, in Charlevoix, Quebec, where the rolling hills and dramatic cliffs were shaped by a meteorite striking the region over 400 million years ago. Upon impact, its geology changed forever, and

since then, erosion has slowly done its work.

“I wrote ‘Bright Green Vibrant Gray’ shortly after losing my mother. On the scale of our human lives, we might recognize the watershed moments, but there is no telling how deeply or subtly they affect us. Lyrically, the song is interested in contrasts – the immediacy and acuity of a nascent romance in the context of larger forces such as geological time.

I was interested in contextualizing an encounter between two people within nature’s humbling and overwhelming scale, which outlasts and ultimately subsumes any smaller and human-scale experiences within it. In discovering another person, there is a heightened awareness, a life-affirming purposefulness. It is akin to creative inspiration; the painter in the video whose work holds such power and immediate force to her ultimately wonders where her work will end up after she’s gone.

“When I first went to Sam Owens’ studio, we made this version of the song, which led to the decision to record the album together. ‘Bright Green Vibrant Gray’ will accompany ‘Swimmer’ and ‘Spring Bug’ on ‘Goodnight Summerland’, my own humble painting of sorts.”