For Alexandra Levy, aka Ada Lea, they include painters, writers, and musicians. She thanks them in the liner notes of her third album, when i paint my masterpiece.
In addition to Bob Dylan, Leonard Cohen, Lana Del Rey and Charli XCX, the Montreal-based singer-songwriter credits the artist Shuvinai Ashoona and the writer Olga Tokarczuk – an indication that the imagery and the lyrics play just as important a role as the music. As for the last of the three, acknowledging the aforementioned musicians suggests that Levy follows the traditions of introspective folk pop but also has a tendency to experiment.
On when i paint, she delivers on the promise woven into her list of influences whose diversity shouldn’t come as a surprise: besides being a recording artist, she paints, writes poetry and teaches songwriting. This transdisciplinarity, for lack of a less technical word, is evident on her new LP where she draws on her many talents to explore the transformative power of art.
Not that she sat down to write when i paint wondering “What if I were to combine all my creative skills for once?” She first put them to the test on her 2019 debut, what we say in private, a collection of raw confessions based on her journaling for 180 days following a breakup. Two years later, one hand on the steering wheel the other sewing a garden presented vignettes of life in Montreal. On when i paint, music, words, and images become inseparable.
Opener “death phase of 2024 (rainlight)” is the exception that proves the rule: unaccompanied, Levy plays a few bars on her guitar like someone honing their chops. It’s tempting to think that this instrumental sets the tone for a purely acoustic folk record, and “moon blossom” does follow in a similar vein. But will a tune called “baby blue frigidaire mini fridge” stay on the same track? While folky, it leans more towards Americana pop and has a bridge so melodic you swear it’s the chorus – until the real one takes flight. Complete with a day-in-the-life inventory that name-checks Paul Celan, Francesca Woodman, Thelonious Monk, and includes a bowl of soggy rice, “baby blue…” is one of many highlights.
There’s only so much music that fits on a vinyl, so Levy had to whittle down from over 200 songs. The sixteen that made the cut answer the question she was preoccupied with while making the album: how can a life be held suspended in song? The charming, piano-rich “midnight magic”, which she has called her favourite, places listeners in a dreamworld and could lull both children and adults. “snowglobe”, an upbeat folk rock song sung with the cool nonchalance of Court and Spark-era Joni Mitchell, conjures up a dinner scene in minute detail – with a twist. “Those four funny, kind of lost-looking people”, it turns out, are trapped inside a snow globe a child is looking at.
Levy’s inventiveness knows no bounds, and if it’s humour you’re after, you won’t be shortchanged either. “bob dylan’s 115th haircut” claims that “Bob Dylan couldn’t have written this song” and yet it features a harmonica solo straight out of a Dylan classic. It’s tongue-in-cheek fun, Levy’s way of paying tribute to one of her major influences. She also nods to Leonard Cohen by giving ingenious tweaks to his lyrics on “i want it all” (“I heard there was a secret stored”) and “something in the wind” (“Love is a knife pushing its way through a crack / That’s how it gets in”).
Often, as in “there is only one thing on my mind”, it’s the music that bursts with creativity. You can lose track of the guitar textures – riffing, jangling, booming, strumming – well before the chorus appears as if conjured by a magic trick. Then the song soars as Levy’s imagination runs wild, prompting her to admit that there are “lots of things on my mind now”. Elsewhere, “down under the van horne overpass” comes close to mainstream country folk pop, but few of her peers have the songwriting craft to guide a track so subtly towards a gorgeous finale.
when i paint is an intimate record full of poetic and melodic turns, giving you the impression that sometimes Levy herself is surprised by where it takes her. She doesn’t resist or try to steer its course, though. “What remains is a feeling,” she sings on the cathartic closer “somebody is walking into the water”, and she seems to be perfectly content with that. And so should we.
