Montreal’s Helena Deland has announced her third solo album, Eternity Shrugs, out 22 January 2027 on Chivi Chivi. She has also shared the single Tip of My Tongue, with a video directed by Jodi Heartz and Alex Blouin, and will play a Montreal headline show at Théâtre Outremont on 15 April 2027.
Deland says the song is about a long-awaited encounter. “I’m thinking of a long-awaited, momentous run-in, the kind that has kept a part of the mind alert,” she says. “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 September’s How Do You Like Me Now, the album’s opening track, which also came with a video by Heartz and Blouin. That song is set at a party, where Deland eyes a notebook belonging to the host. She insists she would never read it, then imagines being caught, only to learn its owner wanted it found. “I wonder to which extent the authors of posthumously published diaries were writing with a vague audience in mind,” she says. “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.”
Eternity Shrugs follows Someone New (2020, Luminelle Recordings) and Goodnight Summerland (2023, Chivi Chivi). It was recorded in rural Quebec in bursts across four seasons, and produced by Deland with longtime bandmates Francis Ledoux and Alexandre Larin, who also engineered and mixed it. Lysandre Ménard and Cedric Martel, who have played with the band for years, also appear. Piano, bass, organ, Rhodes, viola and woodwinds sit around Deland’s voice and guitar. Valentin Ignat mastered the album, and the cover art is by Claudia Picard-Deland. Deland wrote all 11 songs.
The press release points to several tracks. On Room, an outside voice addresses Deland in the second person, a motif that returns across the album. Great Dreams uses 1960s-era strings and a bass line the release likens to Lee Hazlewood; the release also places Montreal contemporary Cindy Lee “at the edge of the frame.” Where I Stand was inspired by seeing Lucinda Williams perform at the Winnipeg Folk Festival, and the closing Here on the Page returns to the notebook from the opening track.
Deland also records as Hildegard with fellow Montreal musician Ouri; the duo released Hildegard in 2021 and Jour 1596 in 2024. In April, Will Oldham shared a video of himself performing her song The Animals, from Goodnight Summerland. This September, she played a short run of solo shows with Hana Stretton, presenting the new songs.
The album tour opens at Le Pantoum in Quebec City on 11 February 2027, followed by seven European and UK dates from 24 February to 4 March, including Berlin, Paris and London. North American dates run from 16 March in Los Angeles to the Montreal show on 15 April, with stops in Vancouver, New York and Toronto.
Canadian dates
- 11 February 2027, Quebec City, Le Pantoum
- 23 March 2027, Vancouver, Fox Cabaret
- 12 April 2027, Toronto, Longboat Hall
- 15 April 2027, Montreal, Théâtre Outremont
Eternity Shrugs tracklist
- How Do You Like Me Now
- My Wedding Cake
- Whole Life
- Room
- Tip of My Tongue
- Great Dreams
- Where I Stand
- Unconditional
- Shazam!
- Careful
- Here on the Page
Photos: Jodi Heartz & Steve Gerrard
Eternity Shrugs album cover art by Claudia Picard-Deland
