Ada Lea Announces New Album ‘when i paint my masterpiece’
The Montreal artist returns with a vivid, 16-track album shaped by rest, reflection, and a renewed creative vision.
Ada Lea has announced her third full-length album when i paint my masterpiece, due out 8 August via Saddle Creek. Alongside the announcement, the Montreal-based artist has released the lead single “baby blue frigidaire mini fridge” and its accompanying video.
The 16-track album follows 2021’s one hand on the steering wheel the other sewing a garden, and reflects a significant period of renewal for Alexandra Levy, the multidisciplinary musician behind Ada Lea. After years of touring and creative burnout, Levy stepped away from the industry to study painting and poetry, begin teaching, and reconnect with her artistic process on her own terms.
“This album felt like a reset,” she says. “I needed rest, community, and to reconnect with why I make art in the first place.” That reorientation included teaching songwriting at Concordia University and co-facilitating The Songwriting Method, a community-led creative group.
“baby blue frigidaire mini fridge” captures this shift in perspective. Inspired in part by the observational cinema of Chantal Akerman, the song explores how the smallest details can contain something universal. “Then what if the frame quickly zooms out as far as it could possibly go?” Levy asks. “What we are left with are three things: ‘our old time souls, this old time moon.’ Two things, I mean.”
The album was recorded in late 2023 in rural Ontario with a tight-knit group of collaborators including drummer Tasy Hudson, guitarist Chris Hauer, and bassist Summer Kodama. The sessions were produced with Luke Temple, whose previous work includes albums with Adrianne Lenker and Hand Habits. Recorded mostly live and without a click track, the songs retain a warm, unpolished quality that embraces human imperfections.
The result is a collection of poetic, tactile songs that reveal Levy’s growth as both a songwriter and visual artist. when i paint my masterpiece doesn’t aim for flawlessness. Instead, it finds power in process, presence, and creative risk.
