Montréal's Helena Deland shares new single 'Truth Nugget' from upcoming debut album 'Someone New', released on 16th October via Luminelle Recordings.
Today Montreal’s emerging singer-songwriter Helena Deland shares 'Truth Nugget', the third single from 'Someone New', the long-awaited debut album due out October 16th on Luminelle Recordings.
“‘Truth Nugget’ is about the distance that exists even between the closest people and how friendship involves nurturing the other's solitude.”
says Deland about the mid-tempo track that builds around a prominent, sliding groove, adding,
“It also touches upon how I experience my guardedness as being part of how I perform my gender.”
The song’s dreamy magic is perfectly captured by an accompanying visualiser directed by Félix Marquis-Poulin, about which Deland says:
“The fountain in a forest at night is what came to mind based on the sounds of the song, but metaphorically it stands as something beautiful, private feeling and reassuring that you
stumble upon unexpectedly, familiar but exciting, the way friendship can be.”
Concerning the album as a whole, Deland says:
“‘Someone New’ is about paradoxically feeling sick of and unfamiliar with myself. I realised 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 recognise what defines me both outwardly and inwardly, and made me somewhat new to myself.”
'Truth Nugget' follows the release of the hypnotic, dream pop single 'Lylz' from this past July, released with an accompanying artful time lapse video and the album title track 'Someone New' released in August accompanied by a video of Deland sitting for a portrait that would result in the album's cover artwork and capturing the discomfort of needing to keep still while being scrutinised and on display.
'Lylz was praised by critics, named it one of their top songs of the week,. '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.
The album recording process was a gradual, slow and deliberate one. Following the release of 'Altogether Unaccompanied Vol III and IV' in late 2018, 'Someone New' was initially written by Deland on her own at home in her bedroom in Montréal.
When she was ready to emerge from the solitary part of the work, she brought the songs to long-time friend Valentin Ignat to flesh out the arrangements. They recorded at a Montréal studio with her band before Deland took the album to New York for additional production and mixing with friend and collaborator Gabe Wax (Soccer Mommy, War On Drugs, Adrianne Lenker).
'Someone New' marks Deland's first music 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'