Drop the needle on Healing Power, the bright, bold new album from acclaimed Canadian recording artist Terra Lightfoot, and you won’t be surprised to learn that it was inspired at high altitude. The album’s cover photo sets the scene — a striking European larch at the edge of the timberline, high above a grassy plateau, Limestone Alps rising in the distance like a dream just out of reach. Alone in Austria, just ahead of a string of solo European dates, and just a third of the way into a sprawling world tour, Lightfoot found herself on a mountain-top beneath that tree, singing and playing guitar, touching grass and drilling into the depths of her emotions.

She was surrounded by flowers yellow and blue, and though Lightfoot herself has been given her share of flowers — a pair of JUNO nominations, a long-list Polaris nod, lead single “Paradise” soundtracking the CBC’s first 2018 Winter Olympics wrap — the strain of nearly three years of steady roadwork was eroding the ground under her feet.  The tree ultimately became emblematic of the next chapter of Lightfoot’s artistic journey as well as the unassuming cover star of her sixth album.

“The story,” Lightfoot says, “is that everything comes back around. It was my idea to call the record Healing Power, and I thought of the most healing place that I knew in the world. That tree taught me about perseverance. It was the only tree living at that altitude. It just kept growing. And I knew I had to be like that too: just to keep growing and changing.”