Ada Lea, the project of Montreal songwriter Alexandra Levy, has shared “copycat,” the first single from a new EP, the end is a wave, due August 12 on Next Door Records. It is her first release since last year’s sprawling sixteen-track when i paint my masterpiece.
“copycat” sets a reflection on friendship and comparison against a dance beat. Levy traces it to reading Elena Ferrante’s Neapolitan novels in 2020, and to the way the narrator Lenu defines herself against her brilliant friend Lila. “Lenu mythologises her, and in so doing diminishes herself and her work,” Levy says, placing the song at the point where Lenu finally looks back on that bond.
The EP gathers songs left off when i paint my masterpiece alongside much older material Levy first recorded years ago, a deliberate test of how the new and the long-buried hold up next to each other. She mixed three of the seven tracks herself, and talks about the release in the context of how little support most working artists get, floating the idea of something like a basic income for people who feel adrift when they are not making things.
Levy has built the Ada Lea catalogue around Montreal. Her debut, what we say in private, blurred private and performed selves, and the Polaris-nominated one hand on the steering wheel the other sewing a garden was full of vignettes set in the city. She now teaches songwriting at Concordia and helps run a community group called The Songwriting Method, which keeps her close to the local scene between records.
Tracklist for the end is a wave:
- copycat
- I’ve never been in love
- the evergreen, the birch
- okay, ok, o.k!
- phases
- chelsea hotel #2
- i miss the heavy shoulders of the trees
photo by Summer Kodama
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