Ada Lea
photo by Bao Ngo

Ada Lea releasing debut LP on Saddle Creek, touring with Angelo de Augustine

Saddle Creek continues to be on a roll with new signings and the latest artist they’ve picked up is Montreal singer/songwriter Ada Lea (real name Alexandra Levy). Her debut album, what we say in private, comes out July 19 via the label, and Ada explains how she and co-producer Tim Gowdy captured its intimate sound:

We stuck microphones out of windows in mid-January to capture the chilly nighttime sounds. We recorded snow removal trucks backing into the lot and airplanes flying overhead. We used voice memos, a piece from here and another from there. I had built a room with the demos of my songs and Tim helped to add a second level.

The first single is “the party,” which is a hushed indie folk song that should appeal to fans of anything from Iron & Wine to Phoebe Bridgers, and here’s what Ada says about it:

‘the party’ came about after spending a magical night on the town with close friends. The song kind of just wrote itself. I always kept trying to make it a longer song, but nothing seemed to fit — or it felt like it was divulging too much,” Ada Lea says of the gently building, intimately hushed track. “I wanted to capture that delightfully unsatisfying quality of the night; being together but wanting something more to happen, yet reveling in the power that had brought us all together at that special moment. That’s life, though…isn’t it? When you’re truly living the moment, you get home and wish you could live it again and again.

Listen and watch the video (directed by Monserrat Muro) for “the party” below.

Ada is also part of Angelo de Augustine‘s previously announced tour. Angelo released his new album Tomb on Asthmatic Kitty earlier this year, and it’s also in the quiet singer/songwriter realm, so this should be a very cool, well-matched pairing.

The tour includes a show at Brooklyn’s gorgeous Park Church Co-Op on May 17 with additional support from Renata Zeiguer (tickets). All dates are listed below.

Ada Lea what we say in private

Tracklist
1. mercury
2. wild heart
3. the party
4. for real now (not pretend)
5. just one, please
6. what makes me sad
7. the dancer
8. yanking the pearls off around my neck…
9. 180 days
10. easy

Angelo de Augustine / Ada Lea — 2019 Tour Dates
5/10/19 – San Francisco, CA @ Cafe Du Nord
5/11/19 – Los Angeles, CA @ Lodge Room
5/15/19 – Vienna, VA @ Jammin Java
5/16/19 – Philadelphia, PA @ The Locks
5/17/19 – Brooklyn, NY @ The Park Church Co-Op
5/20/19 – Allston, MA @ Great Scott