An Interview with indie-fuzz-garage rock band La Rent: “It wasn’t supposed to happen, but it did”
Étienne Lavallée documents London’s current art scene with The Honey Dip Archives, a series of interviews with bands that performed at Honey Dip’s one year anniversary celebration. Here, he meets Kade (vocals/ guitar/ drums), Jeff (vocals/ guitar/ drums), and Emma (bass/tambourine/backing vocals) of La Rent, a London Ontario-based indie-fuzz-garage rock band. They’re regular performers in the South Ontario region and can be found at Honey Dip and other local venues on a regular basis. Their most recent releases, STEEL DRAGON KARATE(2025) and a to zap!(2025) can be found on bandcamp.
***
La Rent audio interview:
Étienne Lavallée: The two of you, Jeff and Kade, are cousins, you’ve been writing and creating together for over a decade tracking all the way to your former project Pets, is that right? How have you kept that deep rooted family connection and long term creative partnership, and how does that shape the foundational sound of your band?
Jeff: All the stuff that we made together just kind of sounds, I don’t know how to describe it–
Kade: It sounds similar, we can get upset with each other, we get angry at each other, it’s awesome. We’re family.
Jeff: We’re very honest with each other.When we’re making things, we’ll tell each other if we don’t like something. We will rework things a million times until we’re both very satisfied with something.
Kade: We grew up together so we’re kind of forced to work together.
Emma: It worked out for you guys.
Étienne Lavallée: The inclusion of synth and stellar low end-bass completely rounds up the live La Rent sonic experience. When you are arranging tracks like those found on Steel Dragon Karate, how do you collaborate to fit those kinds of classic indie rock structures together with these brighter thin layers?
Kade: The synth wasn’t something we’re used to at first. When it was just us, right before we started playing shows, Matt, who’s no longer in the band, he does his own synth stuff which is really cool– Camaguey, shout out.It was interesting having an instrument we weren’t used to thrown into the mix. It was a new thing for all of us. It was fun finding a place for him in stuff already written. The only song that we all wrote together was Dance Q, we jammed it out. That was really easy for Matt to come into. Everything else we wrote before, separately. It was kind of cool finding a place for the synth in there.
Jeff: We found a way to make it work with this stuff, but it was fun to experiment with that.
Emma: It changed the sound we had. I only joined right before we started recording Steel Dragon Karate. I think the synth changed us into something different. It opened us up to where we are now. Even though we don’t play with Matt all the time anymore, we’re friends and that experience with him, as the sound, like it just opened up what we could do, the three of us now.
Étienne Lavallée: Your March 2025 release of Steel Dragon Karate has a really distinct energy. Where did the memorable album title come from, and what kind of collective head space was in the band when you recorded it?
Kade: We could not figure out what to call it. Jeff, I remember, came home one night. Jeff was driving down Wharnecliffe and there was a Dojo called Steel Dragon Karate, that’s not there anymore– it’s gone. The sign is still there, so if you’re driving down Wharnecliffe, you can see near the end of it. Before you hit, like, Horn, there’s a sign that says Steel Dragon Karate, even though that dojo no longer exists. We did actually contact that dojo, but it has a different name now–
Jeff: Smiling Tiger Karate or something.
Kade: When we were about to release it, because we were hoping to do a release show there, the dojo did not want us to do that.
Étienne Lavallée: You’ve shared stages with incredible regional acts like Whine Problem, Birds of Prrrey, and out-of-towners like Miracle Fraud. How does the tight-knit, mutually supportive network of Southwestern Ontario musicians push you to keep evolving?
Kade: There’s so much different stuff going on, and we kinda wanna tap into a little bit of everything. We don’t want to stay in one little bubble of a genre, so we’ve made different genres, in different styles. We like to move around and try different things.
Jeff: We get inspired by other groups around. A big inspiration, at least for like our newer material, The Film Critics of London Ontario, and Public Health of Hamilton. We listen to the releases a lot, listen to what they have out– it’s an awesome, local kind of feeling. It helps shape what we do.We hear them, and think, ‘we want to take a part of that’, and trying it our own way. I think I did a pretty good job. Emma is also from Hamilton, we’re from London. She’s got a whole different perspective on a different scene.
Emma: I like the fact that we switch around between what we’re aiming to play. It helps us fit onto more bills and then we need more people, and we get inspired by different things. It’s not always streamlined. The three of us had a hard time trying to describe what we’re trying to do here, but it’s just what comes out. What we’re listening to very much influences it, and it boils down to whatever we’re listening to right now, especially who we’re inspired by locally.
Étienne Lavallée: Your lyrics have this amazing balance of being incredibly witty, slightly surreal, and deeply relatable all at once. How do you approach writing lyrics collaboratively, and do the words usually come before the music, or do they grow out of a melody you’re jamming on?
Kade: Jeff and I write them separately, but sometimes we have more collaboration on this new album, where we help each other a bit. I might come up with a topic and then I’ll just add it to some music that I have already in my head. I work something out but the lyrics usually all come after. I have the music and I will figure out a basic idea of a topic and then I’ll just write it all out in usually one shot or piece it together over time.
Jeff: I will demo something out and I keep making different versions of it by making noises, with whatever nonsense, making up stuff, and then I piece it all together, which can get difficult sometimes. Kade is intelligent, and I’m yelling stuff. I get to balance stuff.
Emma: I don’t think you’re giving yourself enough credit with that because it’s always cohesive even when it’s not musically precise.
Jeff: You know what? I’ll take that.
Étienne Lavallée: There is a real art to making a song sound completely effortless, laid-back, and casual while actually being tightly arranged and musically precise. How do you approach the songwriting stage to ensure your tracks keep that cool, relaxed feel without losing their sharp structure?
Kade: A lot of the stuff I was inspired by was old school punk, really laid back, kind of loose and sloppy. I really like that whole style, playing and performing like that. Also production. I like very lofi kind of stuff, how it all melds all together until it’s incoherent.
Jeff: Structure stuff? Sometimes you have things in your mind, and they’ll stick. Eventually I’ll bring [structure] to them, and there’s been songs where Kade says, ‘That middle part,’ or maybe ‘you take this part and put [this] here’, and we take everything and grind it down. Emma will confirm it or not, she’ll give the thumbs up or down if something is good or not. Her bass parts, we don’t worry about that either because she finds a way to do a good job.
Kade: Emma just takes what we have, we’ll give her tracks and then she will write entire bass lines to it.
Emma: They live together, and I live in Hamilton. I’ll get demos throughout the week and then eventually wind them down. We’ll talk about them, like, ‘yeah, we like this!’ and then we’ll jam on certain ones. These guys are like fountains of things, and they just keep coming out and they all have [song] names, all the time, and it’s crazy how they just exist right away. I just rock with it because they let me write whatever I want on it. It’s not just luck but that we work so well together.
Étienne Lavallée: With your DIY ethos, you have the total freedom to tweak, overdub, and experiment with a track endlessly. How do you all collectively decide when a song is finally “done” and ready to be tracked for an EP or played live for a London crowd?
Kade: Sometimes it ends up being that one of us will never think it’s complete, and it takes the other two to come and say, ‘stop adding to this please!’, and then sometimes either one of us might not be still not happy with it but it usually comes with time.
Étienne Lavallée: Any artists you’d recommend right now?
Kade: The Film Critics for sure, they’re from London here, Public Health from Hamilton. Moses Symington from London here. Willow Switch is really good, they just played at the beautiful Honey Dip. Robin who is like the head honcho, they do a great job, they’re really cool. They got like a folk scary thing going on, it’s cool.
Jeff: Susans, anything Kellen does is delicious.
Emma: Shout out no normal, shout out Odyssey Records, shout out Honey Dip. Shout out DoughEV, I love a big fat donut, thank you very much, they do great things. Closeouts.
Kade: Thank God for the Rain from Toronto. Ether girls, from Toronto they’re fantastic as well. There’s a lot of good around these parts. You just gotta go to the shows and find it. There is a lot of everything for everybody, and Honey Dip is a good example and DoughEV because we played there a ton too. There’s so much going on, there’s no excuse at this point not to be local and go do it if you wanna do it. Start a band, rock’n’roll, and build it! It’ll be awesome.
Emma: I fell into this, wasn’t supposed to happen, but it did, so just go do it! Just go try it! You could suck! We do sometimes, but it’s whatever!
