After digesting Montreal artist Ada Lea's debut album "what we say in private" for a week or so I've found it to be easily in my top few albums so far this year. Ada Lea has a very artsy and aesthetically pleasing pleasing approach to folk-pop/indie-rock that has made this album a pretty big part of my summer so far with some of the songs being on my heavy rotation since they came out as singles a couple months ago. Even one of the singles that I didn't appreciate at first ended up having quite a bit of enjoyability once the entire album came out. The album is full of some minimal yet fantastic guitar riffs, a general slow tempo that really accompanies Alexandra Levy's laid back and melodic singing and also some really basic drums that work perfectly with the tone of the record. Also just felt like throwing this in, I've seen most of these songs live, and the simplistic nature of them makes performing them rather intuitive, they sound exactly the same live because every instrument is there and none of the parts need to be "lip-synced" which makes hearing the band live a wonderful experience. One of my favorite parts of the album is how at home it feels when I'm getting around in the city, whether its biking, taking the metro or the bus or even just walking. It feels and sounds like Montreal, which is also helped by a couple lines like on 'yanking the pearls off around my neck' where she references the Montreal neighbourhood "Parc-Ex". The record finds the perfect balance between very slow and emotional songs such as 'the party' and '180 days' and more quick paced and 'rock' sounding songs such as 'what makes me sad' (which is my favorite off the album), 'mercury' and 'easy'.
My overall highlights on the album are:
-'mercury', for its thumping instrumental, its extremely catchy chorus that is accompanied by a dope bass guitar and drum kick entrance, and of course Alexandra's voice.
-'the party' which came out a few months ago but is still one of my favorites, for it's catchy refrain in the second half and it's instrumental build up that takes it to the end of the song.
-'just one, please', for its quirkiness and creepiness, the beginning has something off about it from the switches between her normal voice, a deep and dark voice and a chipmunk-esque voice, its slowness and the creepy instrumental that comes out of no where at the end of the song.
-'what makes me sad', I've covered the song so much already but it really is just perfect, the hook is extremely catchy, the guitar is heavenly and overall it's just sonically impressive.
-'yanking the pearls off around my neck' is the most "Montreal" sounding song to me and that's probably why I enjoy it so much, its good but isn't the best on the album, but I like it for the sense of nostalgia it leaves me in.
-'180 days' is just an odd tune, the guitar at first sounds a bit menacing but is then cut off by some beautiful piano chords and it's just overall quite enjoyable.
If I had to pick a song I disliked I guess I'd go with 'for real now (not pretend)' it just sounds a little generic to me and just isn't a sound I appreciate as much as what is displayed on the rest of the record.
After many a listen both in my room and getting around, I give Ada Lea's 'what we say in private' an 8.5/10.