Witches, like Joan Jett, famously have a bad reputation.

It’s an ill-founded reputation, of course, and basically alingering vestige of 700-year-old male terrors run amok in the face of womenwho dared behave in manners that transgressed a very narrow conception ofwomanhood. Those same male terrors, mercifully, tend not to end in watertorture and stake burnings nowadays. Witches still get a rough ride, though, bethey actual witches (who do exist and, for the record, tend to be far moreaccepting and open-minded folk than people who sit around all day frettingabout witches) or simply women who get tagged as “witches” or some variantthereof because – you got it – they dare behave in manners that transgress avery narrow conception of womanhood.

The three young ladies of Magneta Lane are not, as far as weknow, actual witches. They have, however, titled their spirited new EPWitchrock in tacit acknowledgement of what might be considered, at least insome fickle indie-rock and record-label circles, a bad reputation. They alsohave a habit of rocking out in a most unladylike fashion that, by times, bringsto mind a host of other punkish female trailblazers from Patti Smith, ChrissieHynde and Debbie Harry to Cub, Juliana Hatfield and Veruca Salt in addition tothe aforementioned Joan Jett. And, like Jett, they don’t give a damn abouttheir bad reputation.

Magneta Lane – formed in suburban Toronto by Valentine, hersister/drummer Nadia King and one-named bassist French in 2003 – was celebratedon delivery by numerous pundits on both sides of the Canada/U.S. divide as anuncannily pop-savvy trio of teenage ingénues when Paper Bag Records issued itsdebut EP, The Constant Lover, in 2004. Months and months of hard touring at homeand in the States ensued, hardening the band into the notably less naïve outfitthat was steered towards a more tantalizingly aggressive sound by producerJesse Keeler (of Death From Above 1979/MSTRKRFT infamy) on its debutfull-length, Dancing With Daggers, in 2006. Magneta Lane’s promise appearedendless. And then … pause. Too much, too young.

“We were really young when we started. The media thought wewere 19, but we were really 17,” confesses Lexi, while sister Nadia sheepishlyadmits she was 15 years old when the band started playing clubs around Toronto.“In all honesty, we lied because if you’re not 19 almost no clubs here will letyou play their stage.”

“Also, people wouldn’t take us seriously,” adds Nadia.“Imagine if they’d known we were 15 or 17.”

It was, after all, already – as Lexi puts it – “a thing”that Magneta Lane was a band composed of three young women. And while the band had collectively matured enough to seek legal extrication from its first two recording contracts (“We were really young, and at the time we were just excited to be signed so we really didn’t ask a lot of questions”) in search of a better deal for 2009’s Gambling With God LP, it still didn’t feel like it was being taken seriously. Whenever Lexi dared speak up and ask questions of her new handlers about the album’s release, “it was immediately like they were talking to me as if ‘Lexi just put her big-girl shoes on,’ and that really got me upset. And as soon as that happened, I was like: ‘You know what? We’re out of here.’

Cue a brief break from Magneta Lane for all involved. No thought was ever given to ending the band, but it was some time before Lexi felt compelled to return to songwriting again. And then “it was me in the basement on this really awful recording program by myself with a guitar and a bass, just trying to write songs that would make me feel better about what was going on.”

A new manager and a chance link-up at a party with RickJackett and James Black of Toronto modern-rock hitmakers Finger Eleven addedfurther focus to Lexi’s renewed creative energies. Jackett and Black, she wassurprised to learn, shared a great deal of Magneta Lane’s musical tastes andsubsequently became fast friends – friends soon to be entrusted with the taskof producing Magneta Lane’s next recording.

“Those guys are really, really cool,” says Lexi. “I know alot of people will be, like: ‘What does Magneta Lane have to do with FingerEleven. How is there a connect there?’ To answer that, they’re fans of exactlythe same music that we love even though our bands are so different from oneanother. They are good people with an unbiased opinion, that don’t buy intothat buzz band bullshit. Creative minds. It was refreshing.”

“They were very encouraging. They never said: ‘This is the way the song should sound. Let’s turn this into a brand-new song.’ They were always, like: ‘Lex, this is really good. Now you’ve gotta go back and try again and make it better.’ We needed that kind of encouragement and perspective to grow.”

The collaboration catalyzed the intriguing new phase of Magneta Lane’s career heralded by Witchrock. “Burn” plays up the tougher rhythmic intensity hinted at on Dancing With Daggers and introduces a huskier,more mature iteration of Lexi Valentine, the vocalist, whose alto now channels seminal proto-punk forebears as Hynde and Harry with much more bite and confidence. “Good For” chugs forth with new found drama reminiscent of Shirley Manson and Garbage, while “Leave the Light On” – with its barbed assertions that “strange girls need strange things to keep them awake” – genuinely qualifies as anthemic. “Lucky,” meanwhile, revisits what the Magneta Lane ofold did with a more refined command of what it is Magneta Lane does.

The Witchrock title comes from the band’s inability to findan accurate genre classification for its sound while recording.

“What do we even call this? What genre is this? Is it rock?Is it alternative? Is it pop?” laughs Lexi, who decided to embrace her “innervillain” and air all her grievances about the past few years’ trials in theWitchrock lyric sheet. “We decided to make our own genre because we couldn’tfigure out where we fit. We decided it sounds kind of witchy. People have saidthat to us before. Maybe it’s because we’re three girls. Maybe it’s somethingworse, I don’t know. Or care at this point.”

In any case, Magneta Lane is moving upward and onward again.Lexi Valentine doesn’t feel she has a choice in the matter. Indeed, she’srecently found renewed inspiration to keep soldiering on despite everything inPatti Smith’s memoir, Just Kids.

“I love it. It’s a beautiful book. I love it so much,” shesays. “There’s this one part where she’s talking about how she went to see JimMorrison and the Doors. She loved Jim Morrison, obviously, and he was a biginspiration to her, but when she saw him onstage, instead of having thethoughts that every other person would have – ‘Oh my god, this is the greatestperformer I’ve ever seen’ she was like: ‘I can do that.’

“That thought goes back to why we started the band. I really feel that way and I encourage every girl or boy who feels that way to do it because, to be honest, if WE can be in a band, any person who has the passion enough can do it. There was something really inspiring in knowing that Patti Smith felt the same way. I didn’t have to feel guilty about the fact that I was never that girl who would look at a male rock star and think ‘I wanna be with him.’ For me, it was always ‘I want that for myself.’”