Helena Deland
Goodnight Summerland
CHIVI CHIVI
What could be the quietest album of the year could also be one of the most profound. If you’re not familiar with Helena Deland, welcome to the club; the Montreal-based musician released her debut album Someone New early in the pandemic via the buzzy Luminelle Recordings. Now, with the world having settled down and become a more civil, tolerant, and quieter place (yeah, right), this could be Deland’s moment to shine. Therein lies the question one can’t but help mull over as the songwriter tiptoes her way through 11 minimalistic compositions whose precision belies their breeziness.
If Deland were asked just that—Does she want attention (and if so, to what degree), or does she just want to make her art in hermetic fashion?—chances are the folk musician would respond with a simple, silent smile. Instead, turn to the arrestingly delicate Goodnight Summerland for the answer: Maybe we should spend less time pontificating and posturing about music, and more time actually listening to it. While that may seem like an impossible proposition, the more one gets to know Deland (through her songs, at least), her strongest talent becomes clear: This is the exceptionally rare artist who diffuses into her music even when there’s almost no instrumentation to hide behind.
In fact, throughout Goodnight Summerland, some might think the singer, guitarist, and producer might be dealing with cranky neighbors who complain whenever she makes the slightest sound. An amusing moment on the record comes halfway through, at the top of “Roadflower,” when Deland counts off a song by whispering “One, two, three” to her collaborators. Is she on the lam? Did the feds bug her recording space? Kidding aside, it’s actually that moment that captures what Goodnight Summerland is all about. This album isn’t whimsical or precious—it’s too genuine for artifice. Rather, the record’s focus is squarely on tapping into the natural world and reminding us of the wonders—some small, some huge, most in between—that it provides us with. Deland keeps her voice so controlled and tempered, it’s as if she doesn’t want to disturb nature even though it sings to her, and thus, in turn, to us.
Besides her equally reticent co-conspirators Sam Evian and Matt Bauder, a specter seems to loom over Goodnight Summerland: Nick Drake, who worshiped a pink moon 50 years before Deland mused about a “Strawberry Moon,” as she does on her new record’s final song. But while Drake could’ve written something like Deland’s woodwind-centric “Drawbridge,” for example, she never ventures into the flowery, lush territory that the sorely missed Brit frequented. And that works to the advantage of this album, which Deland and Evian recorded in the Catskills and imbued with a quietude that contrasts with her 2020 debut (to say nothing of collaborating with JPEGMAFIA). Like a parent reading Goodnight Moon to their child as they fall into a deep slumber, so does Deland discover that—in nature, at least—our nocturnal dreams and our waking lives aren’t all that far apart.
