Words by Erandhi Mendis // Photography by Lissyelle Laricchia
“Look, I kind of half watched it with Matt’s mum,” laughs singer Mica Tenenbaum of the 2024 horror/sci-fi film The Substance.
For the chronically online, unexpected connections between different forms of art are a welcome delight. I’m the first to admit I subscribe to some niche cultural treadmills but I deeply believe if you watched Demi Moore fight with Margaret Qualley in the past six months after listening to Imaginal Disc – you may have had a similar thought – ‘god I think director Coralie Fargeat has been listening to a lot of Magdalena Bay’s new record.’
Body horror associations aside, synth pop often finds itself the saturated atmospheric sister to indie rock’s overstimulated affliction on moving modern music forwards. For a genre that laid its roots in the late 70s, the rise of retro-futuristic aesthetic and increased popularity of electronic music in mainstream culture might lead some to say that synths are a defining sound of the 2020s. For the most part the bands and DJs making requisite advances to a genre that spans Depeche Mode to Tame Impala – often maintain success by staying in the basement: presiding in soundcloud mixes, 2am club sets or cult discords.
Magdalena Bay provides a deserved exception, with attention in all the right places garnering them a stacked international schedule and roaring critical success. Arriving in Australia this March on the Imaginal Mystery Tour, the band are performing their first ever headline shows down under.
The fanfare around Imaginal Disc already feels storied, every ‘in the know’ person you’ve met at a house party in the past six months has probably put you onto it and some girl with a penchant for eyeliner who you met on Hinge likely said Death and Romance was the best song of 2024. She would be right.
Disc, to it’s credit, is one of the more inventive and creative concept albums released in the past decade. Creating an immersive thematic journey isn’t for the faint of heart – Pink Floyd’s The Dark Side of the Moon or Beyonce’s Lemonade come to mind. Mag Bay’s offering is a relatively serious meditation on identity and self-perception, wrapped in Y2K aesthetic upbeat melody.
“I was trying to find an overarching theme that I felt would be interesting to explore, these ideas and questions about the self felt like a fun starting point,” says Tenenbaum.
When I probe about philosophy there is a hard no to reading Kant and Sarte which brings up the idea that perhaps art does a better job at making philosophy accessible than text. Perhaps a 21st century search for meaning is easier unearthed in film and music than reading postmodern or existentialist takes on existence.
“It’s kind of fun when you maybe read a little bit and then translate it into your own mind and words and try to make music from that. It becomes like your own, sort of like half baked philosophy, but you can get to it because it’s music,” says counterpart Matthew Lewin. “We definitely were not reading a lot of philosophy, but there were some philosophical ideas that we found interesting. Just thinking about what it is to be, what is nothingness, what is being.”
The record siphons through all of the above, following the journey of a character loosely confirmed to be called True, as she is implanted with a disc that sees her become her ideal self.
You can see now, where The Substance connection began.
Along with the fluidity of identity and acceptance of flaw in a rapidly changing world the record is named after a biological term important during metamorphosis. As the daughter of an entomologist, I felt somewhat obligated to understand how this came about.
“It was fairly early in the process, we were literally just researching bugs,” Lewin laughs.
“Yeah, watching YouTube or on Wikipedia or something,” Tenenbaum chimes in. “We did some research later just really curious about how metamorphosis works and part of it was this imaginal disc concept which sounds so cool – I think we knew right away once you know, the connection between disc [bug] and disc [cd] became clear.”
An imaginal disc of course not something the everyday person comes into contact with (save for being a 15 year old in biology class). But it is a compelling idea – an epithelial structure that will eventually form a particular body part or structure. For example, in butterflies, the imaginal disc is responsible for forming structures such as wings during metamorphosis. It is then obvious how the term evokes the idea of potential and transformation, as it holds the promise of something that will evolve or develop into a fully realized form.
The inverse idea of a CD-Rom disc is immortalised on the album cover which was conceived “very quickly”: a CD injury to the forehead – a precursor to a version of ourselves that is fully formed.
Famed for how cohesive the narrative of the visuals are, the duo are quick to note it is all up for interpretation. “The visuals are almost like a secondary story,” says Lewin. “The album is the foundation of of everything. And then the story that gets told in the visuals and the visuals themselves can kind of be overlaid over that. We are applying layers of meaning – it’s not like the visuals are the one correct interpretation of the lyrics. It’s just one idea that you can use the lyrics to create.”
Naturally they are aware of the countless and complex fan theories.
“There’s a lot that get very close to how we interpret them, and then others that are so different but still very cool… we love seeing it regardless,” says Tenenbaum. There is an awareness that many of the fans who spend time on reddit pages have been with them for a long time, rivaling their own relationship.
Tenenbaum and Lewin met as teenagers, now a low key couple they sit next to each other with a level of comfortability that only stems from shared joy and challenge in equal parts.
“I feel like the first time I saw Matt, he was like, probably shredding guitar on stage,” Tenenbaum laughs. “We went to the same after school music programme, we were in the same band eventually, but it didn’t start like that. You were kind of serious. You had your little glasses and you seemed very serious about guitar,” she turns to face him and they share a knowing smile. “I guess I’m just curious about music,” Lewin says almost sheepishly.
“I think the biggest first impression of you for me,” he goes on, “was that you were just a very naturally talented songwriter, which – I was never exposed to someone who could do that before. She has like that gift where songs will just flow from her. In that way,it just feels cosmic or something. I’m just more technical about things and how I approach writing and production.”
It’s always a special treat to hear creative partners and life partners describe each other. They are sitting on the floor of their apartment, puppy running in circles around their crossed legs and I get the sense they don’t often get time to reflect on how special their partnership is and how far it has come. As for how their relationship interacts with their art, Tenenbaum says it is “intertwined.”
“We’ve always just made music together and. I don’t know, do you think we’re like closer than ever as creators?” she asks Lewin.
“Yeah, I mean I feel like we’ve just developed this taste and language creatively that really has only gotten better with time. I think we must have started with at least somewhat of a similar taste, but as we made music together and were sharing music with each other – just like consuming the same art overtime, just our tastes have become extremely similar. So it’s probably both of us influencing each other to like to the point where it’s like our brains have merged into like a singular thing.”
The thing about being one artist with two brains – a phrase they utter to me more than once during our chat – is that you learn to understand the way the other person thinks. So how do two people who go on such an introspective creative journey come out the other end?
“A lot of the album is about perceived internal flaws and coming to terms with acknowledging that having those flaws is what makes us human,” says Tenenbaum. “As the singer and [as musicians] hearing my voice and listening to what the imperfections are – learning to make something feel more human, as an example, hearing [the imperfections] as strings, you know, realising perfection doesn’t even exist. And if it did, it would be boring.”
Boring is simply not something associated with Magdalena Bay. I bring up the perceived idea of how online and within the zeitgeist they seem. Tenenbaum tells me she has just found out about Tyra Banks’ new ice cream company – conveniently opening in Sydney shortly before their tour kicks off.
And then in perfect harmony to their creative relationship, as though he did not hear Tenenbaum just utter a sentence about a food store called Smize and Dream – Lewin laughs, “I feel like there is this mythology about us being chronically online.”
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You can check out Magdalena Bay on their Imaginal Mystery Tour this March. Details and Tickets here.
