ADA LEA’S NEW LP, when i paint my masterpiece, OUT AUGUST 8, 2025 VIA NEXT DOOR RECORDS (CANADA), SADDLE CREEK (WORLDWIDE)
WATCH / SHARE “baby blue frigidaire mini fridge” HERE
BUY / STREAM “baby blue frigidaire mini fridge” HERE
PRE-SAVE when i paint my masterpiece HERE
Photo Credit: Tess Roby // DOWNLOAD HIGH-RES
Ada Lea — the moniker of Montreal-based musician Alexandra Levy — announces her new album, when i paint my masterpiece, out August 8 via Next Door Records and shares its lead single, “baby blue frigidaire mini fridge”. when i paint my masterpiece, the third LP from Ada Lea and follow-up album to one hand on the steering wheel the other sewing a garden, is an epic, 16-track opus from Montreal renaissance woman Levy. It’s a kaleidoscopic exploration of the transformations art can bring: the vision of an uncompromising artist dancing bravely and freely between registers and across mediums. On the album’s cover, Levy holds her guitar against the backdrop of a sea of her paintings tempting us to ask: is painting a metaphor here, for music or life? No! As ever, she resists tidy metaphors. Levy is a master of thorny lowercase titles that germinate and grow with time. In a real, profound way, music and painting go hand-in-hand as she unveils a new style of subversion and surrealism inspired by her transdisciplinarity.
This is on full display on today’s single, a mid-tempo, lilting love song “baby blue frigidaire mini fridge”. Of the inspiration behind the song, Levy reflects impressionistically: “The Chantal Akerman film where the camera moves in slow circular pans around her apartment. Then what if the frame quickly zooms out as far as it could possibly go? And in that wide pull back, what we recognize as universal is still ‘this chair, this window, this mountain view.’ Then, move out again, even further. What we are left with—three things: ‘our old time souls, this old time moon.’ Two things, I mean.”
WATCH / SHARE “baby blue frigidaire mini fridge” HERE
BUY / STREAM “baby blue frigidaire mini fridge” HERE
MORE ABOUT when i paint my masterpiece
The album marks a reset—a quiet revolution. After years of relentless international touring, Levy felt an urgent need for community and renewal. Gruelling road schedules with very little support left her wondering: who am I really doing all this for? The system was uncaring and broken, and so it was that she came to envision a new healthy and healing mode of musical genesis. “For me, that looked like resting, extending my creative reach, going back to school, studying painting and poetry,” she explains. “Taking a step away from music as guided by industry expectations. Simplifying things. Getting a job, starting to teach. Engaging with the process rather than the product.”
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. The shapely, intuitive songs that comprise Ada Lea's third album are surprising, imagistic, tactile. They stand before us and we feel their brushstrokes.
when i paint my masterpiece was largely recorded in rural Ontario in the waning weeks of 2023, and its warm harmonies and lush arrangements link back to a golden era of Canadian folk music. The core Ada Lea band—Tasy Hudson on drums, Chris Hauer on lead guitar, Summer Kodama on bass—recorded the album largely live-off-the-floor and acoustic in one room, off the grid in both senses, in the pocket, loose but in control and without a click in sight. Relinquishing the process to the whims of chance allowed for the sanctity of human error to rear its head. The album was produced alongside Here We Go Magic’s Luke Temple, who has lent his gently psychedelic sensibility to albums by artists like Adrianne Lenker and Hand Habits.
By the end of these sixteen songs, it’s clear: when i paint my masterpiece isn’t chasing perfection, it’s comfortable in the magic of being. These songs are alive with poetic specificity and a wide-open heart—deeply felt, often strange, and always reaching. There’s an optimistic and plainspoken wisdom in the lyrics—which builds on Ada Lea’s singular songwriting style of surprising harmonic and melodic turns—now with a newly rich, organic sound that rewards slow listening. The masterpiece, not a product, is the process.
PRE-SAVE when i paint my masterpiece HERE
when i paint my masterpiece
1. death phase of 2024 (rainlight)
2. moon blossom
3. baby blue frigidaire mini fridge
4. something in the wind
5. midnight magic
6. it isn't enough
7. snow globe
8. everything under the sun
9. just like in the museum
10. bob dylan's 115th haircut
11. diner
12. there is only one thing on my mind
13. dogs playing in the backyard
14. down under the van horne overpass
15. i want it all
16. somebody is walking in the water
PRAISE FOR ADA LEA AND one hand on the steering wheel the other sewing a garden
“With immaculate tendrils of guitars and burbling percussion, one hand on the steering wheel the other sewing a garden is a folk album that’s always pulsating, specific, and never boring.” — Stereogum, “Best Albums of 2021”
“‘Damn’...unfolds like a quiet epiphany.” — The New York Times
“Profound and dynamic, one hand on the steering wheel is a document of embracing your emotional truth.” — Bandcamp
“[‘Damn’ is] propulsive, unsettling and exquisite – and an impressive way to kick off an album.” — NPR Music
“[one hand on the steering wheel the other sewing a garden] us[es] delicate, carefully crafted guitar pop and folk to connect her memories to a wider collective consciousness.” — Paste
“[one hand on the steering wheel the other sewing a garden] glows with a particular late-summer energy, its precise, golden hour arrangements hinting at the wide-open chill of fall.” — Exclaim!
“[one hand on the steering wheel the other sewing a garden is] one of the most off center, but utterly compelling listens of the year.” — Under The Radar
“The magic of one hand on the steering wheel is how Levy somehow manages to speak volumes without giving too much away.” — All Music
