The first time I ever heard Ada Lea’s sophomore album, 2021’s one hand on the steering wheel, the other sewing a garden, I was on an Amtrak train from Pittsburgh to Cleveland in the dead of night. Somewhere around 2 AM, I drifted in and out of a weak sleep, my body crumpled against the window of a train car crawling slowly across Ohio, the air freezing with air conditioning. Barely dreaming, I absorbed bits and pieces of each song in florid, dizzying bursts. When I went back to it the next morning, as rested as one can be in such a state, I found it still had the same hypnagogic charms. Since then, the album has become one I bring up whenever friends and I are going to bat for our personal undersung favorites, championing the lush production, clear vision, and inimitable vocal delivery.
In the intervening years, I have wondered how and when Alexandra Levy, the Montreal-based singer-songwriter behind Ada Lea, might follow up such a record. It would seem Levy was wondering the same. Levy fought some internal battles about what it means to be an artist in the years since. Extensive touring led to burnout, and the music industry’s relentless pace left her in need of a new direction. Nevertheless, Levy has returned with an opus as idiosyncratic as she is. On her third album, when i paint my masterpiece, she is unencumbered by any rigid structure, musical or otherwise. While the seamless sequencing and glossy production are no longer factors, something more admirably ramshackle has replaced them. In a way that calls to mind Mitski’s Be The Cowboy, to listen to when i paint my masterpiece from front to back is to be left guessing what will happen next. Songs vary greatly in length, instrumentation, fidelity, and stakes. It makes for a bumpy, but thrilling ride.
Levy is also a visual artist, and since she is already implicitly comparing her songwriting to her other medium of choice with the album’s title, so too shall I. If I saw one hand on the steering wheel… as a massive oil painting hung on the wall of a small museum, I see when i paint my masterpiece as a peek into an artist’s sketchbook. Flipping through, some moments feel endearingly slight, rough outlines somehow underlining the other songs by existing in their understated forms. The opener “death phase of 2024 (rainlight),” is a 49-second-long instrumental passage of strumming guitar that seems to grasp out for something like a morning glory vine does a trellis. On “moon blossom,” a comparatively lo-fi number, Levy’s singular voice runs free and unaffected. Over faint finger picking, she sounds occasionally like Regina Spektor, her voice cracking slightly. The rawness of it all distracts from how funny it is, with Levy singing about losing her hat to the wind.
Others are more complete visions, rich with detail that remind you of all the things that make Levy such a compelling and singular artist. On the album’s lead single, the sprightly, dare I say twee, “baby blue frigidaire mini fridge,” the lyrics’ nostalgic longing sits in harmony with the instrumentation’s carefree ease. It feels like wistfully gazing out the window but letting the sun warm your face. Levy excels at giving her songs a sense of place. On “baby blue frigidaire mini fridge,” you can feel yourself being surrounded by a cozy room full of puzzles and plants, but the loneliness is still there with you. Similarly, “snowglobe” is bursting at the seams with details. We’re arriving at a party, cake is being frosted, cards are being played. It’s all so idyllic that it approaches surreality. Levy imagines the scene takes place inside a snowglobe, their world up to the whims of something bigger. I suppose it already was, so easy to be turned upside down.
There are only a few moments that feel like weird experiments, and it makes one wonder why that is. As she has done for past projects, Levy wrote hundreds of songs for the album and pared the pile back to just these sixteen. It makes you wonder if there were more songs like “death phase” or “moon blossom” that could have mingled among the grander pieces. Such a lark could have potentially done more to preface the excellent closer “somebody is walking into the water” than “i want it all,” a sleepy piano tune that riffs on “Hallelujah,” but doesn’t seem to go anywhere.
Somewhere outside the binary of lush, detail-rich artwork and rough draft line work sits “bob dylan’s 115th haircut.” One of Levy’s most immediately winning tracks, this oddball number huffs and puffs with harmonicas that keep the whole thing airborne. It begins with a proclamation: “Bob Dylan couldn’t have written this song. Not even if he wanted to, not even just for fun.” Stated plainly, it feels at first like a ribbing, or a provocation. In a way, it is. It’s also simply true, acting as a sort of thesis statement for all when i paint my masterpiece and the circumstances of which it came about. Artists are not disposable, and no two share the same point of view. They are people, not simply grist for the mill, things made solely for our entertainment. As Levy sends the song off, she sings, almost sighing: I feel kind of bad / Kind of lucky, too / With only one of me / And one of you.” It’s a striking message, and one you just don’t expect from a song about sitting Bob Dylan in a barbershop chair.
Read our Q&A with Ada Lea here.
Eric Bennett is a music critic in Pittsburgh with bylines at Pitchfork, Post-Trash and The Alternative. They are also a co-host of Endless Scroll, a weekly podcast covering the intersection of music and internet culture. You can follow them on Twitter @violet_by_hole.
