Magdalena Bay
Somewhere in the ether/net of our collective social cosmos soup floats the magical, masterful pop music of Magdalena Bay, the duo from Los Angeles composed of Mica Tenenbaum and Matthew Lewin. While the pair may claim California as its terra firma, its true home is in the clouds, from where the two emit and output the unique yet familiar frequencies of synthesized nostalgia, kitschy catchiness, and bombastically warped neo-hooks for which the group has become celebrated. Transmitting in both the audio and video realms, Magdalena Bay is an entity adroitly suited for these times, caught in a haze of the known and felt while pushing sonic landscapes woven with the now into the next.
Having met as teenagers in a high school music program in their hometown of Miami (Tenebaum having moved to Florida at age 1 from Buenos Aires), each quickly recognized a kismet and kindred spirit in the other, resulting in the formation of a band, the prog outfit Tabula Rasa, as well as a romance. Lewin was a self-styled guitar shredder armed with his dad’s prog and concept rock records — The Wall, The Bends, Genesis, Fiona Apple — while Tenenbaum was a pianist and singer dipping toes in indie (Modest Mouse) and emo (My Chemical Romance) rock as well as pop made by princesses (Shakira, Britney). Both could read music and Lewin had even studied music theory, also teaching himself how to produce, record, and mix while making two Tabula Rasa records. The pair took a brief break from dating and headed to different colleges but kept the band together, often trading eight-hour bus rides from Penn to Northeastern and vice versa to rehearse, before eventually realizing two things: one, their relationship was too real to be denied, and two, no one young likes prog.
Holding tight to that all-encompassing genre descriptor (“We make pop, but what really is pop anyway?” Tenenbaum asks, while Lewin counters, “We’re a pop group making pop music; all the rest is implied…I think it’s fun to imply that pop music is a wide range of things”), the duo released a grip of EPs and singles before launching its debut album Mercurial World in the fall of 2021. Many outlets, while uniformly praising its melodic hooks, sing-song vocals, and meticulously-crafted production, called it “synth-pop,” which is probably the most specific subgenre Lewin and Tenenbaum will allow. Regardless, the mark had been made, and Magdalena Bay soon began to gather respect, adulation, and fans in the true currency of the day: streaming numbers, social media followers, support slots, festival appearances, and creative collabs. All the while, aided by its highly stylized online aesthetic and internet presence, the band was inching closer to realizing something of an artistic perspective after all.
“We love extending the world of our music past sound into videos or a website or graphics or whatever it might be,” Tenenbaum says.