Someone New

“You say you can\'t hold anything back/It\'s a habit,” Helena Deland sings on the aptly titled “Truth Nugget”—which her first full-length album is full of. The Montreal art-pop experimentalist revels in uncomfortable conversations about relationship dynamics and gender norms, often positioning herself in the crosshairs. On “Dog,” she’s an obedient partner submitting herself to the patriarchy (“I hate to be your dog/But I got everything to gain from your hand on my head/Like I’m about to be trained”), while on “Pale,” she toes the line between ennui and self-loathing, staring at the mirror to declare, “Spending this much time in my naked body is not making it familiar to me.” But on *Someone New*, it’s not just the cutting words that throw you off balance: Deland’s deconstructed dream pop presents a shape-shifting bricolage of bedroom-indie confessionals, jarring drones, and mutant drum-machine beats that vividly reflect the unsettled mindset of someone barely holding it all together.

The Montreal singer-songwriter’s debut album addresses the strangeness of nascent love, channeling feelings of derealization and disconnect in intricately detailed electronic pop miniatures.

From the opening line to the last muffled chord, Someone New is a viscerally candid exercise in vulnerability; Deland constructs an effigy of herself to engulf in flames, hopeful she’ll rise from the ashes reborn.

A Canadian musician who settled in Montreal to pursue recording as a singer/songwriter with a distinctly artful approach, Helena Deland drew the interest of Luminelle Recordings (Fat Possum/House Arrest) with her early EPs.

Like a parcel of breakup roses compressed into a confetti cannon, Helena Deland's debut album is explosive, belaboured and totally intoxicat...

In the artwork for Helena Deland’s debut album ‘Someone New’, a Vermeer-esque portrait painted by Xavier Beldor, the viewer is looking

Montreal singer-songwriter Helena Deland follows the trail blazed by figures like Gwen Stefani on her sophisticated debut album

Canadian singer-songwriter Helena Deland titled her first full-length release Someone New, and I daresay this will be true for most listeners.

Someone New by Helena Deland album review by Adam Fink. The Montreal Singer/songwriter's new full-length is now out via Luminelle Recordings

After her 2016 inaugural EP, Drawing Room, Canadian musician Helena Deland decided on an unorthodox approach to releasing her music. She chose to break up her following set of tracks into short volumes from a series she dubbed Altogether Unaccompanied. Now, two years later, she has forgone this serialized format for a more traditional “debut”