Magneta Lane Pay Tribute to Their Mexican Roots With New Spanish EP

Posted on May 26th 2011 2:00PM by Ciaran Thompson
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Last Gang Records

With the exception of bassist French, Toronto all-female trio Magneta Lane -- which consists of singer-guitarist Lexi Valentine and drummer Nadia King -- are of Mexican descent so they've decided to go back to their roots by re-recording several tracks off their latest album, 'Gambling With God,' in Spanish for a new EP.

"It's four songs off the full-length that have been translated," Valentine tells Spinner. "[Spanish] is our first language. Nadia and I grew up in a Mexican household. It kind of almost gave me a chance to re-write the lyrics, which was cool. Certain words that can't be softened in Spanish sound a little more harsh."

The band is currently in the studio working with Finger Eleven's James Black and Rick Jackett on a new LP to follow 2009's 'Gambling With God,' but reveal the aforementioned EP will be released in the next few months. It will contain translated versions of 'Lady Bones,' 'Violet's Constellations,' 'All the Red Feelings' and bonus track 'Shatter.'

"This is going to be our introductory into the Spanish community," Valentine explains. "What we are planning to do is record this album that we're doing with Rick and James in Spanish and English so we can release it in Latin America on a Latin label. [The EP] is just kind of a taste of what's to come."

Watch Magneta Lane's Video for 'Shatter'
Though a few all-female bands like Texas' Girl in a Coma have translated some of their songs into Spanish, the Toronto trio still feel like they're covering new ground with these upcoming releases.

"[Girl in a Coma] did a cover of a Selina song and so it's cool to see bands doing that," says Valentine. "At the same time, I haven't really seen bands do the crossover thing of putting their songs into Spanish, so we thought, 'Let's do something new if we're going to do this.'"

For their South American fans, this has apparently been a long time coming. Since Magneta Lane's inception in 2003, they've received countless emails from fans requesting their songs be translated into Spanish. For the English-speaking listeners, however, the band is speculating whether this experiment will catch on.

"Maybe out of curiosity it'll stick, but who knows. It's something we did just to cross into that other world. We'll get to travel South American and tour there. The fans down there, or even just the rock music community, is so strong. People still buy hard copies of CDs. It's not like up here where everybody is obsessed with this MP3 thing, and I kind of love that -- I'm stuck in the '90s so lets do it."