Music

Interview With Magneta Lane: New Album, New Label, Best Hot Sauce

by Ciaran Thompson

Lexi Valentine and Nadia King from Toronto, not New York as stated elsewhere, band Magneta Lane sit in Chimichanga, a Mexican restaurant near Davisville, and discuss which hot sauce is better, music from the ‘90s and sporadically turn to view old ladies paddling along outside. Lead singer/guitarist Valentine mentions the likes of Garbage, Radiohead and the Cardigans as some of the acts she has and still listens to, while drummer King remains fairly reticent, chiming in now and again, but mostly focused on the action outside. “I’ve listened to the same stuff on repeat since the 90s,” Valentine said. “That and I listen to insane amounts of Latin music.”

French, not present, plays bass and completes the all female simple music loving trio that doesn’t plan on welcoming any new faces in the near future. “We just try to play music that sticks in people’s heads,” Valentine said. “We started from a simple place and we’re all self-taught. We’ve tried four, but we are very like our own clan. We are the only three girls that I think can stand each other.” King added, “whenever I hear something simple I think ‘oh that’s nice’ or when someone does something too complicated I ask why did they had to add that?”

From the day they “went to Cash Converters and bought gear for like $40,” the band has stuck with their simplistic attitude and have acted no different on their third album, Gambling with God, released in Canada last September. “It’s been safe for the last six or seven years to just play guitar, bass and drums,” Valentine said. “We’ve added things here and there, but maybe as they years go on we’ll start incorporating more things.”

As ambitious as the title of their latest sounds, Valentine admits the album is a little more about their own life experiences rather than other people like on their previous records. “It wasn’t supposed to have a theme, but at the end of the day it kind of did, which was just pretty much being in this place where you are making decisions, gambling parts of yourself and seeing if anything comes back,” she said. “Just deciding what you really want as a person. At that point we were all over the place. I guess the last album (Dancing with Daggers) was more aggressive sounding maybe. Gambling with God probably feels more like us, more personal.”

Another change that took place for this release was the label as the band split with Paper Bag who released their debut The Constant Lover in 2004 and Dancing with Daggers in 2006 and signed with Last Gang. “Ultimately we weren’t happy there for several reasons,” Valentine said about being under Paper Bag. “At some point it starts becoming your career so you need to make sure that not only you, but the people around you are doing things the way you envision them. That’s kind of when Last Gang came into play and they saw things they way we did.”

Shaking off comparisons to having a similar sound to the likes of The Strokes or The Runaways, although the latter seems to be a reference to just having females in the band, all members of Magneta Lane have a role and understanding that roll has helped them keep making music. “I write a main melody and lyrics and Nadia will come in and help me with a bass line that harmonizes perfectly to what I write and then French at the end of the day is kind of the voice of reason that kind of balances it out,” Valentine said. “We’ve always been like that and that’s why we’ve never had any conflict.”

For Valentine however, her passion lies with song writing, or writing in general as she has family inspiration and understands the importance of others connecting with your words. “My grandfather was a writer,” she said. “I look at books and poetry and stuff that he has written and thought he has such beautiful imagery in the way that he writes. Your job as a musician is to do the best not only with your sound, but also with your writing because that might mean something to somebody somewhere.”

This week the band will play Canadian Music Fest in Toronto before heading out on the road to tour the new album. No dates in the U.S. or 24 hour trips to England, which has happened before, have been planned. In the meantime the ladies are content to keep touring, cut down the road trip time between cities and make more music, although an end is in sight, sort of. “We want to be able to take this and do this for as long as we can,” Valentine said. “I can’t see myself being 35 and still being in Magneta Lane, it’s a little weird.”