Brampton-Mississauga Indie Rockers Club Cadetta Keep Climbing with Catchy New Single “Fences”
Club Cadetta continues to build momentum with the recent release of their catchy single “Fences,” their first issue of 2025 on the heels of 2024’s “Terminal 3” and “It Starts Again.”
The Brampton and Mississauga, Ontario four-piece have only been writing since March 2022 and are already making their mark on the music world. The group are a tight, vibey, coordinated force with a sound that has clarity and is inviting to the ears. They are rapidly growing in popularity and notoriety even sharing the stage with the likes of Our Lady Peace.
“We love every crowd we get to play in front of, no matter the size. Not only do we get to share an experience of playing and listening to music we all love, but we get closer and closer to being a better band than we were last show.”
Club Cadetta draws inspiration from groups like The Beatles, The Band, and shows its influences of artists like Coldplay and The Strokes. Club Cadetta sounds like a seasoned band with multiple albums despite only a few official issues to date. In the meantime, tracks like “Fences” will only continue to propel them forward as they gain new fans with each and every gig.
“We had a really fun time recording our song “Fences.” 412 Studios in Toronto had a good variety of synthesizers, which allowed us to experiment with different sounds. We used a couple of synths on the intro to help make it more dramatic. We’d fleshed out the song and started working it into our live sets. We got great reactions from the audience when we played this song and decided to release it as a single. We felt it worked well because it fits in with songs we have previously released,” the group offered.
Club Cadetta members include Timour Adjiev (vocals and guitar), Ethan MacKinnon (vocals and keyboards), Declan Lune (vocals and bass guitar), and Callum Gibson (drums). The indie rockers reveal their intricate instrumentation and musicianship on “Fences” showcasing every tasty sound heard whether a mix of synthesizer, chiming piano, soft harmonies, interweaving guitar, or the continual pulsing beat throughout. “Fences” will corral you in and make you nod your head along or tap along to the beat.
“This was our first time recording a song with a female background singer. We brought in a singer named Alicia House, who is a good friend of the band. Her background vocals bring an interesting vibe to the song.”
Spin after spin, this melodic track, will hypnotize you. “Fences” builds up to a point where you are humming and singing to the soothing refrain of “Why don’t I go try one more time.” “Fences” will challenge you not to immediately replay it ‘one more time’ after it ends…and you will be all the richer for it.
Hi Declan! Good to see you again! How’s your year going so far?
The year has been going great for us so far. We have been playing more gigs around Toronto and we have been hard at work in the studio. We now have a good selection of songs under our belt that we’ve recorded at “The Orange Lounge Recording Studio” in Toronto, as well as a studio called “Catherine North Studios” in Hamilton. It has been a real dream come true for us to be able to record these songs at some great studios and watch our vision for them unravel into fruition. Often times, better than we ever could have hoped for. We have been getting some great feedback from our more recent shows lately, and we’ve been planning more. We are looking forward to showing everyone what we’ve been working on.
“Fences” has such a rich, layered sound. What inspired the lyrics and vibe of the track?
Fences is a relatively newer addition to the Club Cadetta catalogue. We’ve been playing the song live for about a year now, and it’s gotten some really great feedback from fans. So when we were talking about potential follow-ups to our song “Terminal 3”, Fences was definitely brought up. It’s in a weird guitar tuning, so it has a lot of ringing open strings that are octaves of one another creating a bit of a dense soundscape with melodies weaving between droning notes. The lyrics kind of reflect this pattern of monotonous droning with new concepts being introduced. When looking through a fence , you often feel you see things in an obstructed way, never the whole picture but a fragmented version of what’s behind it. This song’s lyrics kind of take that concept and flip it on its head. Each square of the fence you’re looking through are like fragments. Individually framed moments of that larger picture that’s behind, with each square of that fence living on its own accord. Like a tableau of connected moments that can exist individually or collectively. Often times, looking at it individually or collectively gives those same tableaus a different meaning. So the lyrics are about allowing what’s in front of you – the monotony of expected life – to get altered by the frames we contextualize our lives in. Sometimes by introducing different melodies, sometimes by looking through a different square of the fence. We recorded this song at a studio called 412 in Toronto. This particular studio wasn’t very big, but it had a great selection of synthesizers which got Ethan – our keyboard player – and I very excited. So as we were recording, Ethan and I had started laying down some improvised synth lines and we really liked the way the song was turning out. So the vibe of the recorded track had a lot to do with that particular studio.
You’ve only been writing together since 2022—what’s been the biggest milestone for the band so far?
Wow, there have been an array of amazing experiences since forming in 2022. One highlight was playing The Horseshoe Tavern for the first time, a place we’ve seen so many of our favourite bands play. To walk the same steps and play on the same stage as your heroes really meant a lot to us, and showed us we were on the right track. However the biggest highlight was opening for Our Lady Peace on NYE 2023 for the city of Brampton. Playing on a stage with a huge PA, in front of over 1000 people was a pretty surreal experience for all of us, especially doing so in the city some of the guys in the band grew up in.
How did bringing in Alicia House for background vocals come about, and what did she bring to the recording process?
Alicia was someone I met back in 2018. I’d seen her sing at an open jazz jam in Hamilton, and it was clear she was an amazing singer. When we were starting the pre-production process for “Fences”, I knew bringing Alicia in would give the song a unique touch we haven’t had in our previous releases. When she came in to record her parts, we had told her that we were going for a big belting, improvised vocal line to add as a texture to the big climax of the song. Almost like the song “Great Gig in the Sky” by Pink Floyd. She then went into the vocal booth and she nailed it! It was pretty obvious to all of us in the studio that she was going to be a good addition to the track.
Looking ahead, what can fans expect next—from upcoming releases to live performances or new sonic directions?
There is so much planned for Club Cadetta going forward! We are really excited to announce that we are planning on releasing our first EP in the coming months. We’ve been recording some songs we are really proud of over the winter and we are very excited to share them with everybody. In regards to sonic directions, we have started to take advantage of the chemistry we have with one another. In playing live so often you start to develop a sixth sense for your bandmates, and in doing so this affects your writing process. Timour and Ethan have been playing with song structure and form to help keep the listener engaged while sneaking in surprises that – hopefully – perk the ears up. Serving up something familiar within what is desired and expected from popular music. We really love each other and hope that sixth sense shows up when people listen to our music. I think it does unconsciously, but now we’re trying to intentionally bring it about. Our influences always help with this. We’re listening to everything from Wilco, Horsegirl, Big Thief, and Bon Iver to Jim O’Rourke, Chet Atkins, Phoenix, and Marty Robbins. In regards to shows, we have upcoming performances at Sneaky Dees on June 13th and the Monarch Tavern on August 23rd. All updates on future gigs and release dates will be posted on our Club Cadetta Instagram page so stay tuned! We love yall! Hope to see you at our next show!