SADDLE CREEK 8th August 2025
I was so happy to stumble onto Ada Lea with her second album in 2021. Not exactly prolific, it was worth the wait for this, her third. A uniquely talented artist, her songs and delivery have a hypnotic effect on this listener.
A description of her songs risks making them sound like standard singer-songwriter fare but her delivery is an inhabiting of the emotions, with her voice floating to the pitch needed and shifting from intimate to narrating to feelings wrought strong. She’s a Quebequois and songs are snapshots of her life and the life of her city, Montreal. Backed by a relaxed and close band, a steady bass thrum moves things along and mouth organ, piano, picked guitar shifts the upper melodies.
Ada’s excuse is she’s been painting, writing poetry and teaching songwriting and the result of three years woodshedding was a couple of hundred songs that could be trimmed down to sixteen excellent examples on his album. I hear all sorts of influences and colours in different songs; at one moment a tinge of Tom Waits, at another a bit of Bob Dylan, a teeny bit of Leonard Cohen – you know, the classics. But the individual and personal voice with elements of vulnerability, is a thing of Lea’s alone.
Songs touch on passing thoughts, late night reflections and topics that only occurred to Lea once she’d written the song – an intuitive channelling of the subconscious. They often move at the pace of feet walking through the urban environment, in the way a walk will let thoughts settle and form into shapes. The result is the antithesis of punching the air simple rock but also nowhere near the bedroom pop diary entry style of singers like Gracie Abrams.
The tone is very real and it seems songs were recorded largely in one take, soaking up the live atmosphere and shaking the hand of chance. High quality arrangements take the accompaniment into the mainstream Americana scope where she deserves popular success. As the set progresses, more and more individual moments lodge in the ear. The topical obliqueness of ‘baby blue frigidaire fridge’ (she’s a lower case person), the super-infectious ‘something in the wind’, the descending vocal line of ‘it isn’t enough’, the almost unbearably sweet hook of ‘everything under the sun’, the melancholic end-of-an era ‘just like in the museum’ with gorgeously slow echoey guitar. ‘bob dylan’s 115th haircut’ would be a good stepping on point, full of playful references and featuring harmonica. ‘dogs playing in the backyard’ is a lovely jazzy waltzing wander, while ‘i want it all’ weaves, shimmies and quotes wittily in a stream of consciousness.
I’d love to see this getting the recognition it deserves
We reviewed Ada Lea’s last album here:
Ada LeaOne hand on the steering wheel the other sewing a garden