Helena Deland – Eternity Shrugs
Today Montreal’s Helena Deland announces her upcoming album Eternity Shrugs, due for release January 22nd, 2027 on Chivi Chivi.
The album announcement is accompanied by the resonant, beautifully fraught, shimmering anthem “Tip of My Tongue” which comes with a video by Jodi Heartz and Alex Blouin.
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.
Helena Deland 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,” released with a video directed by Jodi Heartz + Alex Blouin. “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.
According to Deland: “I wonder to which extent the authors of posthumously published diaries were writing with a vague audience in mind. Here, I’m convincing myself that a person I admire, very much still alive, has written everything down in their notebook in the hopes of it being found. When that day finally came, they’d say ‘That’s right. There I am. How do you like me now?’”
Stereogum called the song “quick, curious, and elegant,” upon its release, 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” and Austin Town Hall said “There’s always been something magical, almost whimsical, about her voice, but in this current state, it’s exhibiting this masterful maturity that makes it extremely difficult not to fall in love.”
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.
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.
Helena Deland – Live
WINTER 2027 – EUROPE + UK HEADLINE TOUR
February 24, 2027 – Silent Green • Berlin, DE
February 25, 2027 – Bitterzoet • Amsterdam, NL
February 26, 2027 – Petit Bain • Paris, FR
February 27, 2027 – Botanique • Brussels, BE
March 2, 2027 – YES Basement • Manchester, UK
March 3, 2027 – The Louisiana • Bristol, UK
March 4, 2027 – eartH Theatre • London, UK
SPRING 2027 – NA HEADLINE TOUR
Feb 11, 2027 – Pantoum • Québec, QC
March 16, 2027 – Lodge Room • Los Angeles, CA
March 18, 2027 – The Chapel • San Francisco, CA
March 20, 2027 – Holocene • Portland, OR
March 21, 2027 – Barboza • Seattle, WA
March 23, 2027 – Fox Cabaret • Vancouver, BC
April 1, 2027 – Songbyrd • Washington, DC
April 2, 2027 – LPR • New York, NY
April 12, 2027 – Longboat Hall • Toronto, ON
April 15, 2027 – Théâtre Outremont • Montréal, CA
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