Album Review: Alex Ateah, Experiencing Discomfort

Alex Ateah is anything but a household name, but her debut album Experiencing Discomfort indicates that she is probably okay with that. A Winnipeg native, Ateah is a Fine Arts grad and Upright Citizen’s Brigade alumnus. A filmmaker, actor, and performance artist, she brings an unconventionally cerebral and self-referential approach to her comedy album, delivering a surreal examination of the medium. 

The album begins with Ateah awkwardly singing “I didn’t know I was gonna do the worm; didn’t know I was gonna do the worm” over her intro music, which sets up this album as a bizarrely experimental recreation of what comedy actually looks like during a pandemic. Rather than using canned laughter to  emphasize every punchline with a frenzy of applause and laughter, Ateah prefers to let her throw-away jokes and prompting questions fall flat. In the case of the track aptly titled ‘Serving Material’, she simply includes a single condescending clap amongst the silence.  Experiencing Discomfort is, after all, an exercise in capturing all the uncomfortable, silly, sometimes embarrassing moments all comedians experience on stage. 

As a whole, Experiencing Discomfort is an attempt to manipulate the core ingredients of a comedy album without disguising the messy work involved in the process. Rather than hiding the fact that it was produced and recorded without a venue, an audience, or even a full hour of fully fleshed-out material, Ateah unabashedly brings the process itself to the surface of this performance. 

Experiencing Discomfort is an album Ateah has created just for herself, and as a result she has given us a one-of-a-kind performance that was weirdly delightful to listen to. 

Experiencing Discomfort was released February 26, 2021.
Listen to it here.