Someone New

“You say you can't hold anything back/It's a habit,” Helena Deland sings on the aptly titled “Truth Nugget”—which her first full-length album is full of. The Montreal art-pop experimentalist revels in uncomfortable conversations about relationship dynamics and gender norms, often positioning herself in the crosshairs. On “Dog,” she’s an obedient partner submitting herself to the patriarchy (“I hate to be your dog/But I got everything to gain from your hand on my head/Like I’m about to be trained”), while on “Pale,” she toes the line between ennui and self-loathing, staring at the mirror to declare, “Spending this much time in my naked body is not making it familiar to me.” But on Someone New, it’s not just the cutting words that throw you off balance: Deland’s deconstructed dream pop presents a shape-shifting bricolage of bedroom-indie confessionals, jarring drones, and mutant drum-machine beats that vividly reflect the unsettled mindset of someone barely holding it all together.