There’s a particular kind of tension in Hélène Barbier‘s music — the sound of someone treading water while contemplating the deep. Her new single, “Kindness in a Cup,” captures that duality with hypnotic precision. Released this week as the second glimpse of her forthcoming album Panorama (out November 14th via Bonsound), the track finds the Montreal avant-pop artist balancing vulnerability and resolve over a bass line that loops like an anxious thought. It follows “Lapin,” which surfaced earlier this autumn, and arrives ahead of album launch shows at La Toscadura on November 27th (as part of Festival Triste) and Le Pantoum in Quebec City the following night.
“It’s about the desire to keep your head above the water, while flirting with the idea of letting yourself sink,” Barbier explains. The song pivots on that precarious edge, building around her distinctive vocal patterns and culminating in unexpected violin arrangements that feel both tender and strange. There’s something quietly reassuring woven into the song’s fabric, even as it entertains darker impulses — a spectral companion ensuring safe passage.
Panorama itself took three years to shape, emerging from a period when stress and health issues punctured Barbier’s otherwise stable life. The nine tracks read like postcards dispatched from different emotional coordinates, their cryptic lyrics leaving room for the listener to wander. Influences blur across decades: imagine The Shaggs taking guitar lessons from Tom Verlaine in present-day Montreal, then stumbling into a band by accident. The result is jangle pop filtered through a gooey, tangled lens — melodies that hum along sweetly before veering somewhere disorienting.
Though deeply personal, the album is also collaborative. Barbier stripped her songs down to essentials, then enlisted a roster of Montreal players including Ben Lalonde and Joe Chamandy (Retail Simps), Samuel Gougoux (Corridor, Victime), Alexandra Levy (Ada Lea), Meg Duffy (Hand Habits), and producer Emmanuel Éthier. It’s the third full-length from the France-born artist, following Have You Met Elliot? (2019) and Regulus (2021), and further cements her place in the city’s thriving independent scene — one she helps nurture through Celluloid Lunch, the label she co-founded with Chamandy.
Photos – Dominic Berthiaume & Delphine Snyers
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