Ada Lea debuts video and announces album
Album release: 19th July 2019
Label: Sadle Creek
More info: Ada Lea website
“…beautiful and insightful…Often, her songs end up revealing the strange and weird thoughts grief and transition can bring out of us, feeling all the more honest and real in its chaos.” - The FADER
Ada Lea -- the project of Montreal-based artist and musician Alexandra Levy -- today debuted her video for second single “mercury” alongside an interview with The FADER. Watch the Monserrat Muro-directed clip now HERE.
Saddle Creek’s newest signing, Ada Lea will release her debut album what we say in private on July 19, 2019, and the album is available for pre-order in multiple formats -- including a limited edition glow-in-the-dark vinyl exclusive to the Saddle Creek webstore -- HERE. Gorilla vs. Bear debuted first single “the party” last month and the song earned additional praise from outlets including The FADER, Brooklyn Vegan, and Paste, among others.
Following a run of U.S. dates last month supporting Angelo De Augustine, Ada Lea has announced North American tour dates in August. The tour begins the 1st in Toronto and includes a Brooklyn, NY show on the 2nd at Union Pool. She’ll also head overseas for the first time in November for a stop at the Mirrors Festival in London.
To Levy -- who is also a painter -- music and visual art are different vessels for communicating similar ideas. “It's a world that I can build around me and sit inside,” she says. Through all her art, Levy explores the concept of womanhood as it feels and looks to her, as well as love and how it transforms over time. She doesn’t shy away from exploring uncomfortable and painful emotions, either. With the brightness of love, strength, and hope contrasted with the darkness of loss, suffering, isolation, and abandonment, the Ada Lea album what we say in private is a varied and vivid record that constantly seems to shift in the light, bringing together all the intricate influences she’s collected over the years.
"what we say in private" began with a need to document the ending of an important romantic relationship. Following a tormented period of staying up all night (sometimes days at a time), frantically painting or writing songs as a means of coping, she journaled for 180 days in the hope of finding herself again. She conducted this period of analysis and introspection in private, like most of her creative pursuits, and the process eventually resulted in a rebirth: a rediscovery of self and a new sense of freedom and self-acceptance. These chaotic feelings and the resulting catharsis are deeply felt in the final recording of what we say in private. Levy wanted the album to feel like a journal entry from those 180 days as she cycled through emotions. Throughout, she expresses feelings and thoughts that all humans experience behind closed doors and alone, but are conditioned to keep to themselves.
"what we say in private" truly comes alive thanks to the way these recordings utilize the very real world around them, rather than shutting it all out. Expanding the boundaries of the studio, Levy, alongside the record’s producer Tim Gowdy, found new and nuanced ways of allowing the songs to flourish. “It was all part of a bigger idea,” she says. “We stuck microphones out of windows in mid-January to capture the chilly nighttime sounds. We recorded snow removal trucks backing into the lot and airplanes flying overhead. We used voice memos, a piece from here and another from there. I had built a room with the demos of my songs and Tim helped to add a second level.” As such, the album reverberates with human warmth, defined by the signature characteristics that can be found throughout -- as on “the party,” which fittingly comes wrapped up in static white noise, a soft atmosphere lingering in the distance and gently surrounding the stark instrumentation that is gradually introduced.
Read Ada Lea’s full bio / download photos & artwork HERE.
