Posts Tagged ‘Ada Lea’

SUN JUNE – ” Somewhere + 3 “

Posted: October 3, 2021 in MUSIC
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2021 has been something of a break-out year for the Austin, Texas quintet, Sun June. Back in February they teamed up with Keeled Scales and Run For Cover, for the release of their latest album, “Somewhere“. With a hectic touring schedule on both sides of the Atlantic, including UK dates with Ada Lea, this week the band have announced details of an expanded edition of the record, “Somewhere + 3“, fittingly including three new tracks. Ahead of the record’s release in January, the band have also shared the first of those tracks with the world, in the shape of their new single, “Easy”.

‘Everything I had, I want it back,’ Sun June’s Laura Colwell sings on the Austin band’s latest single – certainly a relatable refrain for these times. It’s also a fittingly wistful sentiment for a band that playfully describes its sound as “regret pop,” blending the melodic flutter of Colwell’s voice with dreamy tempos that invite contemplation.”

“‘Easy’ is a romantic struggle song. It’s about love and partnership and longstanding arguments that are hard to get past,” says Laura Colwell. “We started working on it after quarantine was lifted. Everyone had been cloistered alone for months, so frustration was easy to tap into. At the same time, it was joyous and cathartic to play together again, so the song came out upbeat and optimistic too. We loved getting to return to Good Danny’s studio to record—it was easy to find the sounds we wanted and get back into the Somewhere vibe.”

Is there that much difference between love and loss? Austin band Sun June, who jokingly refer to their 2018 debut recording as ‘regret pop’, found themselves in different circumstances when the time came to record their new album, “Somewhere” via Keeled Scales. Collaborators Stephen Salisbury and Laura Colwell are now a couple, and that became the foundation for new material. “I guess the biggest difference,” vocalist Colwell considers, “is how we are looking at our relationship together, and at grief in a more present way. We aren’t looking too far in the rear view – rather we are exploring who we are to each other now. We’ve also been going through a few life changes together and that snuck its way into our songs. Time is weird and, while we try to do our best to not repeat past mistakes, sorrow still seeps in.”

Life never holds fast to one emotion for very long, highs and lows find their way in, and this is true for the carefully considered and arranged material on “Somewhere“. Sunny optimism can be displaced by dark clouds. “I am always skating between total chaos like ‘Bad Girl’ and relaxed optimism like ‘Finding Out’ or ‘Real Thing’,” says Colwell. “I recently made a choice to return to an old job, and I’m living alone for the first time ever. So I’m very much in a weird state of mind like on ‘Everything I Had’. We’re a pretty mixed bag of personalities, to be honest, so I feel like even though we all can relate to the songs on the record, the entire band all jumbled together is very much like a mix of ‘Everywhere’, ‘Bad with Time’ and ‘Karen O’ – we exist in polar opposite emotional realms simultaneously.”

“Somewhere” is a big step up for the five members of Sun June, and the dichotomy of the songs makes for fascinating listening. It all seems to fit in with our uncertain times.  “We really stretched out our time in the studio over weekends and random days” Colwell recalls.  “Our very last day in the studio was the day Austin went on lockdown, so we lucked out with the timing, quite honestly. We ended up pushing the release by several months, which felt right. We still got to work on several music videos, and shooting/planning those during a pandemic was tricky. Releasing singles in 2020 felt strange, but we felt like a long,  drawn-out release was right up our alley. We are all feeling grateful and lucky — the pandemic has hit others a lot harder. We hope to be on the other side of this soon and look forward to touring again when that happens.     

“Somewhere” + 3 is out January 14th via Run For Cover Records. 

ADA LEA – ” Damn “

Posted: September 25, 2021 in MUSIC
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May be an image of 1 person and text that says 'beriew ADA LEA one hand on the wheel steering the other sewing a garden available in Limited edition color LP bundle, color P, CD, Tape, Digital pre-order now out Sept. 24th on Saddle Creek and Next Door Records (CA)'

Indie-pop singer/songwriter Ada Lea (born Alexandra Levy) asserts her artistry anew on “One Hand On The Steering Wheel The Other Sewing A Garden”  ,the impressive follow-up to her 2019 debut “What We Say In Private”. Set in Levy’s native Montreal, the album looks back on personal moments from the artist’s coming of age in the city, using delicate, carefully crafted guitar pop and folk to connect her memories to a wider collective consciousness. “Every year is just a little bit darker / Then the darker gets darker / Then it’s dark as hell,” Levy sings on hooky album opener “damn,” the unflinching observation letting a bit more light into the world.

Levy wrote and demoed one hand on the steering wheel during an artist residency in Banff, Alberta, reuniting with her “Woman, Here” EP (2020) collaborator Marshall Vore (Phoebe Bridgers) to round the album into form. Drummer Tasy Hudson, guitarist Harrison Whitford (of Bridgers’ band) and mixing engineer Burke Reid (Courtney Barnett) also lent their talents to the project.

ADA LEA – ” One Hand On The Steering Wheel The Other Sewing A Garden “

Posted: August 25, 2021 in MUSIC
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Ada Lea’s new album, “one hand on the steering wheel the other sewing a garden”, is out September 24th.

“partner” is one of the stories that make up one hand on the steering wheel…As a whole, these tracks chart unavoidable growth that comes with experience. On one hand, it’s a collection of walking-paced, cathartic pop/folk songs, and on the other a book of heart-twisting, rear-view stories of city life. The album is set in Montreal and each song exists as a dot on a personal history map of the city where Levy grew up. The city exists as both the location of and a character in many of these songs.

Throughout “partner,” Lea sings as if she’s bright-eyed during a late night. Her narrative lyrics about an introspective evening unfurls over piano, synth, and a drum machine: “the cab lets me off at the diner // just for memory’s sake // and I sit at the same booth // with tears in my eyes // begging won’t you admit you’re giving up on me too quick.” Levy describes it as “a song about moving through a memory… an involuntary memory that steals up on you the night after a rager (which takes place the morning after the song ‘damn’).” The accompanying cinematic video, directed by Erica Orofino, features Levy as she moves through memories and the city. 

Montreal’s Ada Lea (the moniker of Alexandra Levy) releases a new single/video, “partner,” from her forthcoming album, It’s the follow-up to previously-released singles “Damn” and “Hurt.”

Limited edition songbook bundle available for pre-order today.

Ada Lea – partner from one hand on the steering wheel the other sewing a garden out September 24th on Saddle Creek and Next Door.

The resulting sounds range from classic, soft-rock beauty to intimate finger-picked folk passages and night-drive art-pop. And the textures are frequently surprising due to the collage of lo-fi and hi-fi sounds that tastefully decorate the album without ever clouding the heart-center of the song. Inspired by personal experience, daydreams, and Elena Ferrante’s Neapolitan novels, the lyrics center storytelling on a bigger scale. The experience and emotions of a year are communicated through Levy’s vignettes of city life. Her prose is centered in its setting of the St Denis area of Montreal as it draws up memories from local haunts like Fameux, La Rockette, and Quai des Brumes in rearview reverie. Levy creates a balance through the album’s year by splitting her songs evenly into four seasons. 

As a song of winter, opening track “damn,” kicks off the narrative with the events of a cursed New Year’s Eve party. The song feels timeless with an AM Gold groove and 70s studio sheen. The accompanying video, directed by Monse Muro, is beautiful. It features stunning and intimate choreography by Axelle “Ebony” Munezero and Brittney Canda. Some of the movements are elongated and smooth, while others are erratic and abrupt.

Whether to consider these songs fiction or memoir remains unknown. Levy says “Why would I try to write a story that’s not my own? What good would that do?” but on the other hand, she is quick to note the ways that language fails to describe reality, and how difficult this makes it to tell an actually true story. The poetic misuse of the word “sewing” in the album’s title serves as a nod to the limitations words provide. What does it mean to sew the garden? And how can we appreciate its carefully knit blooms when the rearview mirror is so full of car exhaust?

Alexandra Levy: vocals Harrison Whitford: guitar, piano, bass Marshall Vore: synth, drum machine Tasy Hudson: drums *a sincere thank you to the canada council for the arts and banff centre for arts and creativity for their continued support and trust in the creation of songs throughout the years*

Music and Lyrics: Alexandra Levy

ADA LEA – ” Hurt “

Posted: June 22, 2021 in MUSIC
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“hurt,” is Ada Lea’s (the moniker of Alexandra Levy) first new piece of music since 2020’s woman, here EP. “hurt” lives in a snowy Montreal winter, a city that Levy calls home and lives and breathes through her music. It thrums with bass and brooding keys, as Levy uses frank language and imagery: “somebody hurt me badly, now I’m stuck in a rut // now I don’t know my body // I could say it or say nothing at all // take a walk or take none at all // get on a bus back to montreal // tell my friends or say nothing at all.” When the song hits its peak, her voice is carried by a swirl of strings and quick-tempoed keys.

“I wanted to find a way to communicate complicated feelings using the simplest language possible,” says Levy. “I came with a narrative and removed almost every detail, so as not to obfuscate the feeling – but left it open in terms of a resolution: was this hurt necessarily a bad thing?”

“hurt” follows Levy’s woman, here EP (2020) and her debut, what we say in private (2019), a collection of raw, confessional, and at times messy emotions, presented through beautifully colourful pop songs. “hurt” is a first taste of what’s to come.

Released June 22nd, 2021

ADA LEA – ” What We Say In Private “

Posted: May 12, 2020 in CLASSIC ALBUMS, MUSIC
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what we say in private

Montreal, Quebec-based musician Alexandra Levy — who records and performs as Ada Lea— is also a painter and visual artist, and traces of her many creative abilities run throughout her debut album “what we say in private”, a beautifully colorful collection of profound pop songs to be released later this summer via Saddle Creek Records .

To her, music and visual art are different vessels for communicating similar ideas. Levy’s appreciation of female artists — including the writer Sylvia Plath, visual artists Frida Kahlo and Eva Hesse, and musicians Karen Dalton and Nina Simone — provides inspiration and guidance, informing her use of multiple artforms as tools for self-expression. Whether it’s creating music or art, “It’s a world that I can build around me and sit inside,”she says.Through all her work, 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 journalled 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 Ada Lea 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. This is reflected in the lyrics, the artwork, and the songs — together forming a public exhibition of deeply private matter. The album is a collection of raw, confessional, and at times messy emotions, presented to a society that can fear such realness, often favouring the uncomplicated, curated, and manicured.

Levy delivers something very special on what we say in private. Bold and daring, but also gentle and vulnerable, the album finds new ways of presenting its vision from one inspired idea to the next, a big leap into the wider world with passion and exuberance.

Released: July 19th, 2019

ADA LEA – ” Woman Here “

Posted: March 7, 2020 in MUSIC
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woman, here

The way we talk about gender in the music business hasn’t seemed to progress at all over time. “Female-fronted” is still the way bands get pitched to me from publicists, while “all-female” is too frequently cited as something of a gimmick to set a typical rock act apart “Woman Here” is practically what these exploitational press releases promise, though Ada Lea’s new single “woman, here” is the quiet inverse to this declaration, a modest, mildly wonky guitar-driven number in which the songwriter recognizes in the chorus that “[she] can’t be a woman here” (nor “over there”)—whether she’s referring to her industry or anywhere else seems irrelevant.

Less than a year after the release of her highly-acclaimed debut album, “what we say in private”, Montreal, Quebec-based musician Alexandra Levy – who records and performs as Ada Lea – returns in early 2020 with a new four-song EP which acts as a bridge between what’s come before and where she means to go next.

A mix of both the old and new, the “woman, here” EP takes its name from a brand new composition recorded recently in LA with Marshall Vore ( Phoebe Bridgers, Better Oblivion Community Center). Perhaps her most direct work to-date, the new song offers a beautiful glimpse into the bold new chapter of Ada Lea. “I went to LA and recorded the song in a day and a half with Marshall,” Levy says of the song. “The writing and recording of this song happened like magic.”

Aside from the title-track, which is shared here alongside a raw and captivating demo version, the  woman, here EP also offers two previously-unheard recordings from the what we say in private sessions, in the form of the reflective and melancholy ‘perfect world’, and the sparse and dream-like ‘jade’, which was inspired by a John Updike short story.

A fascinating glimpse behind the curtain, Levy says that the new EP should be seen as being “like a second cousin” to  what we say in private. “We included the songs that we still felt close to,” she explains, “but didn’t seem to have a place on the album.”

Ada Lea – “woman, here” from the EP woman, here, Out 27/03/2020

ADA LEA – ” What We Say In Private “

Posted: November 12, 2019 in CLASSIC ALBUMS, MUSIC
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It’s hard to classify the sounds of Ada Lea’s “What We Say in Private”, as it mimics the playful intensity of Angel Olsen’s “Shut Up Kiss Me” on opener “mercury” before unraveling into Big Thief–like existential folk on the ensuing “Wild Heart.” The reason for this, perhaps, is Alexandra Levy’s scrapped plan to split the record down the middle between tracks she identified as “sun songs” and those she classified as “moon songs.” The result is a blending of the two on songs like “The Party,” which begins with an inherently lunar acoustic tranquility before the chorus’s glowing ambiance sets in around the two minute mark. More experimental elements shine through across the album via spoken-word postscripts, distorted vocal samples, ambient blips, and—her evident strong suit—lo-fi crescendos, for a truly unique feel.

Montreal, Quebec-based musician Alexandra Levy is also a painter and visual artist, and traces of her many creative abilities run throughout her debut album what we say in private, a beautifully colorful collection of profound pop songs. Throughout, she expresses feelings and thoughts that all humans experience behind closed doors and alone, but are conditioned to keep to themselves. This is reflected in the lyrics, the artwork, and the songs — together forming a public exhibition of deeply private matter. The album is a collection of raw, confessional, and at times messy emotions, presented to a society that can fear such realness, often favoring the uncomplicated, curated, and manicured.

“The Montreal singer-songwriter’s debut album uses heartbreak as the springboard for an innovative brand of indie rock that’s both fiery and introspective.

Ada Lea, what we say in private (Saddle Creek)