Nonsuch Park (sa)

He may be a proud Toronto native, but Scott Helman’s heart belongs to England. His sophomore release, Nonsuch Park (sa), is named for an actual green space located near his grandfather’s home in the southern London suburb of Sutton. During Scott’s annual childhood trips to the UK, the park became their special meeting place, and his warm memories of that time form the emotional core of this record, completed in the wake of his grandfather’s passing. And through that nostalgic lens, Helman expands the scope to take stock of his life—his parents’ divorce, his relationship with his girlfriend, his anxieties over the fate of the planet. Helman approaches these heavy topics with the same light touch he brought to his 2017 Juno-nominated full-length debut Hôtel de Ville, seamlessly piecing together singer-songwriter melodies, R&B production tics, tropical beats, and an indie edge into upbeat pop anthems. But Nonsuch Park also reveals a newfound conceptual vision, with thematically linked tracks and impressionistic interludes providing a fully immersive journey into Helman’s psyche. And there’s a lot more where this came from: Nonsuch Park (sa) is but the first chapter of a planned two-part series—the (sa) stands for Side A. “I love listening to proper records, I love vinyl,” Helman tells Apple Music. “So I just thought it'd be really neat for people to have two sides of one project released over time.” Here, Helman takes us on a track-by-track tour of his project's first phase.

(nonsuchpark)
“I've been working with my producer Tawgs [Salter] since I was 17, and he’s still the best producer I’ve ever met. But the older I got, the more interested I got in production myself—and instead of him squashing that idea, he really fanned that flame for me and showed me how to produce. I just wanted to be able to use that to express things that I hadn't been able to express before. And I feel like these interludes are so simple, but they're really the heart of the record—those times of solitude where you're not creating for anybody or for the charts. I really love this intro because it sets the scene for the record. It's also jarring, because when you hear it, you think you're going to be listening to some crazy experimental acoustic record, but then the next song is a slam-it-over-your-head pop song.”

Wait No More
“Whether you're an artist or an athlete or a taxi driver or you're a student, I think all people have this vision of where they want to be in the future, and they have this idea of who they were in the past, and as helpful as those things can be to nudge you forward, I think the only way to actually ever get to where you want to be is to be present. So this song is really about just letting go of the future and letting go of the past and being present and being available to the people around you.”

Lois
“I was in Nashville with [songwriters] Gordie Sampson and Simon Wilcox, and they're like, ‘Hey, look, we have this song that we wrote, and we wrote it for you.’ And initially, I was like, ‘Ah, man, I don't do that.’ I'm not a pop star who reaches out to publishing companies and is like, ‘Send me 40 of your hits and I'm going to pick one,’ you know what I mean? But Simon and Gordie are like family to me, so I was like, ‘All right, fine, I'll hear it.’ And the second I heard that chorus drop, I was like, ‘I hate you all! I’m so angry because I have to cut this song!’ It’s so sick.”

Good Problems
“To me, this is like 'Ripple Effect' 2.0—that was a song on my first album, Hôtel de Ville, and it was also deeply inspired by divorce and trauma and heartbreak. And it was one of the first moments where me and my team accessed the heart of what we do. But with this one, Simon initially came into the studio in Toronto, and she was like, ‘Okay, fuck all this really sentimental stuff. I want to write a dumb song called “Good Problem”!' And it was going to be almost hip-hop-inspired, with all these really funny and ironic Drake-type metaphors. We were having a blast with it, but we weren't really getting anywhere. So we kind of did a 360 and reverted back to that place we naturally go to—like, let's gun for the most epic, sentimental, beautiful, honest song we can. And then everybody just started talking about what they’ve been through, so I started talking about my parents' divorce, and what it's like to be a kid when your world has changed and your heroes are falling apart. I'm really glad I was able to turn that moment in my life into something that might be useful for someone that's going through that.”

EVERGREEN
“Simon and I were just kind of talking about mindfulness and what it means to be present, and that sort of just became a song about climate change, and what it means to be alive now and what it means to strive for a better world when we know this one is on the brink of collapse. I'm not a very cosmic person; I'm a nihilist in my heart. But I think if we turn our hearts to hope, that's where solutions and beauty comes from, even if we kind of know it might not work.”

(california)
“I tried to write, like, 10 songs over that piano part because I loved it so much, and I just kept giving up because it wasn't working. Then, before COVID, my girlfriend Kat and I were planning to move to LA. We had all our boxes spread out on the floor, and the plates stacked, and she looked so beautiful sitting on the floor surrounded by cutlery. And I said, ‘Can you just give me a sec on the piano?’ and I started playing that same chord progression. I put my phone on record and this song just flowed out of me.”

Afraid of America
“This was 100 percent inspired by David Bowie’s ‘I’m Afraid of Americans.’ I’m not afraid to admit it. I think I had listened to that song a week before writing this one and it was still in my consciousness. But the thing I love the most about this song is that the verse is basically my girlfriend saying, ‘Do you really want to go to this crazy place?’ And then the person talking in the chorus is me: ‘What do you mean, baby, let’s go! Let’s get a Chevrolet and Air Force Ones and follow our dreams and be Americans!’ I love that dichotomy between the sense of opportunity and the sense of fear and disillusionment. And then the bridge was written using my girlfriend’s words—she was born in Boston, actually—and it’s so weird to have an artist like Alessia Cara sing that. Here’s an artist that I just love and look up to singing this lyric that's basically my girlfriend telling me we're gonna be okay. It’s just so crazy to me.”

Everything Sucks
“This is also about me and Kat—we had broken up in university and went through a couple years where we weren't together. It's nice to be with her now and be past all the drama, but still be able to like play that character on stage and be that dude leaping onto the steps of her residence hall.”

True Crime
“This song was really inspired by Elvis Costello, like 'Watching the Detectives'—that weird, kind of ironic, quippy lyric that sort of feels cheap, but is really relatable. I feel really vulnerable singing that chorus—‘For what you did to me, girl, yeah, you should do time.’ There’s a lot of pain and suffering in that lyric. But I feel like 'True Crime' is a return back to songs like 'PDA' or 'Chinese Restaurant' [from Hôtel de Ville]—those fun acoustic songs. Although this record is a left turn for me, I still wanted to be like, 'Hey, I'm still here!'”

(meetagain) / Papa
“When my grandfather passed away, I was on tour on the West Coast. And I was just torn apart, because he was one of my best friends, and I felt very guilty that I wasn't with him. That took me a long time to recover from, because I knew that he would've wanted me to be out there—he told me that himself: 'Do not come here, we want you doing what you love.' I really wanted to write a song about him and about his life, but I just couldn't do it. It was so hard to do. And then I reconnected with Simon and Gordie and Tawgs in Nashville. We started writing some pop songs, but I said to them, ‘Guys, I really want to try to write a song about my papa.’ And it just kinda came out. Simon says writing songs is sometimes like this pipe, and when all is going well, you have songs coming out of it. But then songs stop coming, and it's because there's a song that’s lodged in there and you just got to get one out that you love. And 'Papa' was that song for me.”