Magneta Lane sisters are reborn as Lolaa
What’s the deal? As occasionally happens, this week’s New Favourite Thing is actually an Old Favourite Thing — two-thirds of one, anyway — in glitzy new camouflage.
Well, not that old an Old Favourite Thing. Sisters Lexi Valentine and Nadia King were still in high school and covertly just a tad more underage than they typically let on to the promoters booking their band into nightclubs on both sides of the border when they rose to prominence as members of lovable local trio Magneta Lane in the early 2000s — and became pals of mine who would eventually ask me to write the bio for their 2013 EP, Witch-rock. So it’s not like the pair’s recent reinvention as the shinier, synthier duo Lolaa has been conducted in the shadow of their imminent consignment to the rock ’n’ roll retirement home.
In deference to Valentine and King’s Mexican heritage, the name Lolaa is a play on the shortened form of the Spanish name Dolores, which means “Lady of Sorrows.” But their musical arsenal, at least as it has been sparingly unveiled to date, appears more intent on shaking a tail feather than wallowing in misery.
It definitely pursues a more tech-savvy trajectory than Magneta Lane’s scruffy/ punky catalogue, yet the pop heart beating at the music’s centre is entirely familiar. An EP’s worth of material is ready to go, Valentine reports, and “we’ll probably be sharing a new track online soon.” Sum up what you do in a few simple sentences. “Drums, bass, movement, rhythm, popinfused vocals and no-limits songwriting,” emails Valentine, defaulting in part to the Lolaa bio. “For Lolaa we took inspiration from Latin American music, as well as the discotheque era: Donna Summer, Bianca Jagger. The lightness, the elegance, the dancing. Pop music. It just became a mix of all the ideas in our heads, a cultural collide of colours . . . Onstage the vibe is really fun, yet soulful. It’s glittery, it’s shimmery. We want people to feel like they want to dance and celebrate life with us. We want to make people feel good. That is all!” What’s a song I need to hear right now? “Always Been.” It’ll have to do, since it’s pretty much all the Lolaa there is to be found out there on the Interweb at the moment. Still an inviting first foot forward a year on from its release. Where can I see them play? At the Drake Underground, opening for Helado Negro on Oct. 29.