Album: Witchrock (EP)
Label: eOne Music Canada
Rating: 4/5
It’s one thing to be influenced by the likes of Joan Jett or Shirley Manson, but it’s another to actually capture (sonically) what made those women so strong in the first place…passionate expressiveness.
Magneta Lane’s (a female 3-piece from Toronto) latest release, a 4-track EP entitled Witchrock, is a volatile exploration into the realms of the human heart. Fuelled by dark, emotive instrumentation, and by angry, fervently realized vocalizations (by lead singer/guitarist/principal songwriter Lexi Valentine), Witchrock stings with the coldest of calculations.
But to guilelessly classify this album as emotionally rigid would be to undermine the many other sonic structures that populate throughout.
Yes, a melancholic tone does permeate throughout the duration of the EP, but it’s partially offset by vivid, electrifying hooks that help to identify an ongoing struggle between the light and dark of human emotion.
Burn, the opening track, bristles with unbridled angst that is propelled by driving, therapeutic lyricism. Whereas, Leave the Light On is haunting/tragic in structure and tone but yet never dares to trespass into the realm of the melodramatic.
Not perfect, but an album that brims with an intelligence that is sorely missing in today’s music scene.
