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Aug 30, 2023 By Mark Redfern Photography by Lawrence Fafard

Montreal singer/songwriter Helena Deland has announced a new album, Goodnight Summerland, and shared a new song from it, “Bright Green Vibrant Gray,” via a music video. Goodnight Summerland is due out October 13 via Chivi Chivi. Xavier Beldor directed the “Bright Green Vibrant Gray” video. Watch it below, followed by the album’s tracklist and cover artwork, as well as Deland’s upcoming tour dates.

Deland released her debut solo album, Someone New, in 2020 on Luminelle. It was #30 on our Top 100 Albums of 2020 list. Goodnight Summerland includes “Spring Bug,” a new song Deland shared in June that was one of our Songs of the Week, and the 2022 single “Swimmer.”

Deland co-produced the new album with Sam Evian (aka Sam Owens, who also engineered it), recording at Flying Cloud Recordings in the Catskill mountains. Heba Kadry (Beach House, Slowdive) mastered the album.

Deland had this to say about Goodnight Summerland and “Bright Green Vibrant Gray” in a press release: “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.”

Read our 2018 The End interview with Helena Deland about endings and death.

Goodnight Summerland Tracklist:

1. Moon Pith
2. Saying Something
3. Spring Bug
4. Bright Green Vibrant Gray
5. Drawbridge
6. Roadflower
7. The Animals
8. Who I Sound Like
9. Swimmer
10. Night Soft As Silk
11. Strawberry Moon

Helena Deland Tour Dates:

11/02/2023 - Vancouver - Fox Cabaret
11/03/2023 - Seattle - Madame Lou’s
11/04/2023 - Portland - Mississippi Studios
11/06/2023 - San Francisco - Cafe du Nord
11/07/2023 - Los Angeles - Lodge Room
11/08/2023 - San Diego - Casbah
11/09/2023 - Phoenix - Valley Bar
11/11/2023 - Denver - Lost Lake
11/13/2023 - Minneapolis - 7th st
11/14/2023 - Chicago - Lincoln Hall
11/15/2023 - Detroit - El club
11/16/2023 - Toronto - Horseshoe
11/18/2023 - Brooklyn - Music Hall of Williamsburg
11/19/2023 - DC - Songbyrd
11/24/2023 - Montréal - La Tulipe
11/25/2023 - Québec - Le Pantoum
02/13/2024 - Baden - One Of A Million Festival
02/14/2024 - Munich - Milla
02/15/2024 - Berlin - Privatclub
02/16/2024 - Amsterdam - Paradiso Upstairs
02/17/2024 - Paris - Pop Up Du Label
02/19/2024 - Brussels - Botanique
02/21/2024 - London - The Lexington

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