So Faint + Ada LeaTuesday, October 20, 8:00 p.m.

Sonic Hall, 12 Wyndham St N

Buy ticketsIn 2010, in a Vancouver studio, Lyn Heinemann and Hannah Georgas were recording albums down the hall from each other. A chance invitation for backing vocals sparked a lasting creative connection. Over the next decade, Hannah built an acclaimed international career with Juno and Polaris nominations and global touring, while Lyn stepped away from performing to focus on family and mental health work, continuing to write privately. Reuniting in 2023, they formed So Faint — a guitar-driven project defined by intertwined vocals, emotional honesty, and off-kilter melodic songwriting. Their writing process mirrors the record’s emotional duality. Songs were written long-distance by sending demos and voice memos back and forth between Belleville and Vancouver. Each would pull apart and rebuild the other’s ideas until the songs felt jointly inhabited. Tracking brought that push–pull into sharper focus. The bed tracks were recorded in Toronto, engineered by Graham Walsh (Holy Fuck, Bully, Alvvays) and additional tracking took place at Hannah’s home in Belleville. Sean Sroka (Ten Kills the Pack), produced and acts as the record’s quiet architect, supporting the project from start to finish. Mixed by Alex Farrar, whose recent work with MJ Lenderman, SoccerMommy, and Angel Olsen tends to favour clarity without sterility. What makes So Faint addictive isn’t just its craft, it’s the tension humming underneath. The songs carry dark subject matter with disarming lightness, like stepping into a car with someone you trust without asking the destination. There’s risk in that surrender, but also relief. So Faint understands that adulthood rarely offers clean narrative arcs; instead, it gives us overlapping timelines of loss and possibility. The record sits squarely in that overlap and makes it sound strangely, irresistibly alive. So Faint sounds like the kind of record that only arrives after years of living through grief, stability, and doubt; then choosing to distill all of it into sharp, deceptively buoyant pop songs.Instagram •Ada Lea is the moniker of Montreal-based musician Alexandra Levy, a Renaissance woman whose albums have been swelling in scope alongside the evolution of her artistic life. Her recent turn toward pedagogy, teaching a songwriting course at Concordia University and co-facilitating a community-based group called The Songwriting Method, weaves another vivid thread into her multifaceted practice. Her debut LP, what we say in private, blurred the lines between interior and performative worlds. Her sophomore record, the Polaris Music Prize nominated one hand on the steering wheel the other sewing a garden, featured vignettes centered on Montreal. On this sprawling and ambitious album, written over three years and whittled down from over 200 songs, she asks: what happens when you... pause? How can a life be held suspended in song? The album is a kaleidoscopic exploration of the transformations art can bring: the vision of an uncompromising artist dancing bravely and freely between registers and across mediums. Following last year’s epic, 16-track opus, when i paint my masterpiece, Ada Lea's new EP, the end is a wave, arrives August 12 via Next Door Records. Lead single “copycat” is a reflection on friendship, comparison, and proximity set to a dance beat.Instagram | Facebook | Spotify | Apple Music