Imaginal Disk is Magdalena Bay discovering their sci-fi synthpop niche

A pairing of metaphors this nerdy – one deriving from the process of metamorphosis, the other pulled straight out of the science fiction canon – is par for the course for Matthew Lewin and Mica Tenenbaum, the precocious young duo that makes up Magdalena Bay. The two started out in a prog band in high school before realizing that nobody listens to prog anymore. At least, nobody that they cared about. So instead, as they went on to study at the most elite universities in the United States, they dropped their band entirely and swapped inspirations from art-rock to Top 40 radio in search of notoriety. Making synthpop would be simple, they thought – after all, they had spent their time writing insane twenty-minute jams moving in and out of 7/4 time, and what’s a short radio bop compared to that?

It could have been that easy. But Matt and Mica never quite discovered how to be normal, and eventually, it seemed like they didn’t want to. Even on their debut album and (many) other releases, the duo’s pop music paid homage to and subverted the pop zeitgeist in the same breath. They put Mariah Carey-esque love songs back-to-back with EDM slow-burners back-to-back with shoegaze-y pop rock, stitched together by song transitions smooth enough to make their releases appear more like megamixes (or, sometimes, literal “mini mix”es that they released as EPs). The elements of pop were there – verse-chorus-verse structures, hooks that would get stuck in your head for months, et cetera – but they were augmented with something more unique and artsy. Call it music theory geekery, or a lingering desire to make something as grand as their past work. But whatever that quality is, it has blossomed to full fruition on their sophomore album: prog-rock or otherwise, this is the most weird, complex music they’ve ever made. Imaginal Disk is a testament to good old-fashioned artistry – it’s the product of a band intensely honing what they want to sound like and ending up with a style so unique that it’s barely possible to describe. It’s dorky and strange and dramatic, like the duo themselves. And it sounds like nothing I’ve ever heard.

Imaginal Disk is held together by a loose concept: a character named True being coerced into getting a disk inserted into her head, leading to the creation of a new parallel being. This story is explored extensively throughout the surreal music videos released alongside many of the album’s singles. But that concept isn’t strictly important to the album: the band told Best Fit that the album is a broad “exploration of self and consciousness” and that the videos’ overarching narrative acts as a complementary interpretation of the album’s themes. By that framing, Imaginal Disk looks less like a sci-fi rock opera and more like just a collection of pop songs centered around a common theme. But the album still feels like something larger than the sum of its parts.

Perhaps that’s because the whole album, unlike anything Magdalena Bay has made before, has a unified aesthetic. That’s not to say that the album is homogeneous – anything but. Trying to describe this album in terms of its contemporaries, I only ended up with meaningless word salad: Age of Adz-era Sufjan Stevens if he made space rock revival, the Pet Shop Boys covering ABBA, every Kero Kero Bonito song mashed into one. Despite that, every track on Imaginal Disk somehow manages to sound like the same album.

Part of that is Mica’s distinctively airy vocals, part of it is the wash of psychedelia that coats every track in a hypnagogic aura. It’s also because everything on Imaginal Disk, no matter the sound, is turned up to 11. The lyricism is musical-theater levels of dramatic, and the instrumentals match that vibe – the raging distorted guitars swallowing the mix on “That’s My Floor,” the crunchiness on the final chorus of “Image,” the 80s string-synth-drum-machine combo on “Cry For Me”. Magdalena Bay’s past work had that same bombastic vibe, but when it’s surrounded by a unified theme and aesthetic, it feels so much more gratifying.

As great as Magdalena Bay’s previous releases were – and they were great – they didn’t exactly have a sound, as much as they were good at every sound. By contrast, in press releases, Lewin said that the process of creating Imaginal Disk was realizing “what a Magdalena Bay song sounds and feels like.” On one hand, that sounds like nonsense, because the album barely has a consistent genre. Even calling this “synthpop” feels like a disservice. But Imaginal Disk still feels like a band discovering their voice.

If I had to describe this album’s ethos, perhaps it wouldn’t be that far from the truth: it’s a prog-rock band making pop music and refusing to compromise on the best qualities of either. There are weird key changes and genre modulations and grandiose stories packed throughout this whole album, right next to some of the catchiest hooks of the year and danceable rhythms and nostalgic 90s-throwback material. It’s avant-garde, catchy, accessible, confusing, and fantastical, all in the best ways. It’s fitting that the album’s biological namesake is a metaphor for evolution, because Imaginal Disk sees Magdalena Bay channeling their overflowing creative energy into something novel – in a way, like an animal metamorphosing and inheriting its full body.