Sitting in an Austin hotel during the South by Southwest festival, Lexi Valentine is in the midst of explaining how Magneta Lane's burgeoning success is leading her to take extraordinary experiences for granted. As if on cue, the band's manager interrupts to point out all three Beastie Boys strolling by -- and is promptly greeted with shrugs.
"See, I don't even get excited about that kind of thing any more," the sardonic singer/guitarist says, while both her bandmates break into laughter. "It's like, who cares?"
onsidering that the Beasties are old enough to be their fathers, it's possible the 21-year-old Torontonians' disinterest is partly generational. But it's also part and parcel of the coolly detached demeanour that's been central to their mounting buzz since they burst onto the local scene three years ago.
If they hadn't been careful, Magneta Lane - celebrating the recent release of their debut full-length album, Dancing with Daggers, with a show tonight at the Horseshoe Tavern - could have been Josie and the Pussycats. We're talking about three girls with no previous musical experience - including a bassist who goes only by the name French - who decided to form a band because high school was ending and they weren't sure what else to do. Barely having learned to play their instruments, they found themselves in possession of a contract from Toronto's Paper Bag Records and in the studio recording their debut EP, The Constant Lover.
The easy thing would have been to throw on short skirts, write coy lyrics and turn everything over to a few producers and marketing types. But to their credit, they've resolutely stuck to doing it on their own terms.
"Your looks will fade at some point," Valentine says. "What's gonna matter is what's on your CD."
Clearly, there will be no Fiona Apple-type regrets 10 years down the road about being coerced into filming videos in their underwear. "At photo shoots, we're always choosing what we wear," French says. "There's never any pressure, like, 'hey, can you take that strap off and lean over like this?' No one's ever like that, because they know we'd probably punch them in the face."
Threats of violence notwithstanding, Magneta Lane's no-nonsense approach is translating into an increasingly appealing live act - their catchy, bass-heavy brand of guitar-rock benefitting from a cool-as-ice stage presence that's earning good reviews on both sides of the border. And while Dancing with Daggers (produced by the Death from Above 1979-linked MSTRKRFT) is perhaps a little too polished to capture their live sound, the new tunes fit their persona much better than the old ones.
"We were really young, so we hadn't experienced anything," French says of recording The Constant Lover. "Now this album is more about our experiences."
If the band was less than starry-eyed when it started, it's all the less so after a few years in the industry - as evidenced by Valentine's world-weary new lyrics. "Everything - emotionally, physically, relationships that you have with people, things that you see, people that you meet ... all that sort of thing at some point collided with this album, and it became a reflection of that," the singer says. "I don't know if disenchanted is the right word, because we love what we do. But there are sacrifices and that's part of it."
Nor is there much chance of Magneta Lane going soft anytime soon. "How are you supposed to have this wonderful take on love, when this industry makes you thick-skinned? That's why we don't write beautiful love songs - right now it doesn't really exist for us, and it can't."
By the time it does exist, Valentine might not be singing about it. In typically precocious fashion, she insists that she plans to be done with fronting a band by the time she's 27. "You do become a slave to your work," she says. "I just sit down and think about it and I'm like, I don't want this forever."
Long after the Beastie Boys have passed by, talk turns to a musician the girls actually would be excited by meeting - Pete Doherty, the drug-addled British rocker whom they unexpectedly commence gushing over.
In a way, it's reassuring. For a fleeting moment, they actually seem like they're 21. But by the time they're on stage the next night, their self-described "poker faces" are back on again. And their growing following wouldn't have it any other way.
