WATCH / SHARE “copycat” HERE
BUY / STREAM “copycat” HERE
NEW EP, the end is a wave, OUT AUGUST 12 VIA NEXT DOOR RECORDS
PRE-SAVE, the end is a wave, HERE
Photo Credit: Summer Kodama // DOWNLOAD HIGH-RES
Ada Lea, the moniker of Montreal-based musician Alexandra Levy, releases “copycat” the first single from her new EP, the end is a wave, out August 12 via Next Door Records. Following last year’s epic, 16-track opus, when i paint my masterpiece, “copycat” is a reflection on friendship, comparison, and proximity set to a dance beat.
On Friendship: “In 2020, I’d just finished reading The Neapolitan Quartet,” explains Levy. “Lila and Lenu’s relationship felt like some of the close and maybe slightly unhealthy friendships in my life at the time. In the case of the quartet, Lenu is defined by Lila, her Brilliant Friend. Lenu is preoccupied by what Lila is doing, thinking… whom she’s loving. Lenu mythologises her, and in so doing diminishes herself and her work. Through the four books we come to feel that Lila is truly special and Lenu is just orbiting her. Everything seems a result of some proximity to Lila. Lila was always the source, never Lenu alone. But toward the end of the quartet, there’s a shift in Lenu as she reflects back on her life with Lila. So I wrote ‘copycat’ about that moment.”
WATCH / SHARE “copycat” HERE
BUY / STREAM “copycat” HERE
MORE ABOUT the end is a wave
the end is a wave is an experimentation of sorts. “For this EP, I wanted to combine songs that were cut from when i paint my masterpiece, as well as the ones I’d recorded a million years ago when I was just a child,” says Levy. “It was to test their fragility. How would they behave next to the other? The old and the new? The brave and the haunted? The impression and the finely sculpted. I also decided to mix three of the songs myself (was it a mistake? you tell me…I says). I’ve been thinking of the kind of artist I’d like to be, and how I’d like to see all artists treated. I am most at home when I am creating and performing, it is what I was born to do. These worlds are opposites. 12th house and 6th, 4th & 10th, the story goes on. I can imagine a future where artists are supported by UBI and they do what they want. A kind of welfare for the serious artists that are not afraid to play. It serves the betterment of society to support artists this way. I know there are others out there, like me, that feel little purpose in their life when they’re not working toward making things. But it’s also near to impossible to make things when you are fighting to protect your energy at every turn, feeling burnt out.”
PRE-SAVE, the end is a wave, HERE
Levy is a Renaissance woman, and Ada Lea’s albums have been swelling in scope alongside the evolution of her artistic life. Her recent turn toward pedagogy, teaching a songwriting course at Concordia University and co-facilitating a community-based group called The Songwriting Method, weaves another vivid thread into her multifaceted practice. Her debut LP, what we say in private, blurred the lines between interior and performative worlds. Her sophomore record, the Polaris Music Prize nominated one hand on the steering wheel the other sewing a garden, featured vignettes centered on Montreal. On this sprawling and ambitious album, written over three years and whittled down from over 200 songs, she asks: what happens when you... pause? How can a life be held suspended in song? The album is a kaleidoscopic exploration of the transformations art can bring: the vision of an uncompromising artist dancing bravely and freely between registers and across mediums.
the end is a wave Cover Art // DOWNLOAD HIGH-RES
TRACKLIST
01 copycat
02 I’ve never been in love
03 the evergreen, the birch
04 okay, ok, o.k!
05 phases
06 chelsea hotel #2
07 i miss the heavy shoulders of the trees