Montréal's Helena Deland announces debut album 'Someone New' out 16th October on Luminelle Recordings & she is sharing the title track.
Today marks the release of 'Someone New', the title track from the long-awaited debut album by Montreal’s singer-songwriter Helena Deland, due out 16th October on Luminelle Recordings.
As Deland shares about the song,
"'Someone New’ is about the validation and relief from one’s internal world that a romantic encounter can offer, but also about becoming aware that there seems to be an expiry date on that type of opportunity for women.”
“It ambivalently celebrates and condemns the idea of being in one’s ‘prime’, as it is so rare that youth and self-understanding are simultaneous.”
Understated and lavish, grave but upbeat, 'Someone New' is the thesis of the record.
The single is accompanied by a video directed by Xavier Bélanger-Dorval that features Deland sitting for a portrait, capturing the discomfort of needing to keep still while being scrutinized and on display.
Concerning the album as a whole, Deland says:
“‘Someone New’ is about paradoxically feeling sick of and unfamiliar with myself.
I realized that I associated primarily with what others (real or imagined) projected onto me, and acted in ways to avoid disappointing this projection or imagined expectation.
The quest to please and conform distracted me from who I already was and I laboured to comply to a normative set of expectations. I noticed my troubled relationship with my body, which escaped my control and gave others so much information it seemed to withhold from me.
I sought comfort in romantic relationships, which validated me and where I was free to at least momentarily reinvent myself for the other's sake.
I felt guilty of my privilege, the idea of which my dejection didn't sit well with, and I was trapped in patterns that grew more and more familiar. I longed to become someone new! I had to look at this critically in order to write songs I thought made the least bit of sense, trying not to give into the tendency to bend myself to integrated expectations and my anxiety to please.
The meta delight in this whole story is that the process helped me better recognize what defines me both outwardly and inwardly, and made me somewhat new to myself.”
The news follows the release of the hypnotic, dream pop single 'Lylz' from this past July. The song was praised by critics, named it one of their top songs of the week by different international media. 'Lylz' was inspired by the relationship between early 20th century French composers (and sisters) Lili and Nadia Boulanger, along with Deland’s friend of the same name who introduced her to their work. The track was recorded with Jake Portrait (Unknown Mortal Orchestra) in his Greenpoint studio and co-produced by Deland.
An ode to a friendship born out of mutual esteem and fanned by the flames of worldly dissatisfaction, 'Lylz' also appears on the upcoming 'Someone New' and marked Deland's first release since her 2018 series of beloved EPs entitled 'Altogether Unaccompanied'. The two-year period that followed involved considerable touring, with stints supporting Weyes Blood and Connan Mockasin among others, along with a notable set opening for Iggy Pop in Paris for La Blogothèque and ARTE, and a collaboration with JPEGMAFIA.
Helena Deland - 'Someone New'