REVIEW: Magdalena Bay w/ Nourished by Time | 9.25.24 @ Brooklyn Bowl [PHOTOS]

Magdalena Bay
w/ Nourished by Time
Brooklyn Bowl; Nashville, TN
September 25, 2024

Review and photos by Drake Boling

When I say Magdalena Bay sounds like music beamed in from the future, you might have some sense of what that could entail. But that still can’t prepare you for what the future contains. But maybe it’s actually from the distant past, ancient memories of past versions of yourself. Or perhaps an alternate timeline… or maybe they are just one of the most interesting bands in modern alternative music. On their recent stop at Nashville’s Brooklyn Bowl, Mag Bay transmitted their Imaginal Mysteries Tour to our freshly-cleansed brains, for an evening of energetic, psychedelic pop bliss.

The first sign of life from Mag Bay’s set was an oval-mirror-shaped video wall with angelic wings sprouting out of it. About 20 minutes after opener Nourished by Time went off, the video wall lit up with a huge eyeball darting around, taking it all in, and casting a watchful gaze over the Brooklyn Bowl. I quickly scooted to the photo pit and took a knee, ready for the band to emerge any minute. The other photographers up there seemed a little cooler and perhaps better-prepared than me, talking sidestage. I just kind of sat there on one knee, camera ready, like an overexcited tourist. Literally 10 minutes and four pre-show-playlist-songs later, I was still sitting there like a dork, but I had chosen my path. I had to stay there until they started. Around three more songs played, and everyone else was still minding their own business. Finally I gave up, stood up, and went over to the side of the stage. Naturally the band immediately emerged. I went right back to my pathetic kneeling position. But enough about me and my wimpy knee.

The band exploded onstage with “She Looked Like Me!,” the opening track from one of this year’s best albums, Imaginal Disk. One thing I will say about this song is although it’s catchy and pretty exciting, it’s probably my least favorite from their new album. But who cares!  It was pretty electrifying as an opener due to how percussive the song is. Right out the gate the band established a high energy, singer Mica Tenenbaum patrolling the stage back and forth, twirling and jumping to the impactful drumming. At times the instrumental to this song sounds industrial to the point that it wouldn’t sound out of place on a SOPHIE record. This soundscape was juxtaposed with Mica’s flowery, extremely high-pitched voice, setting the precedent for an evening of extremes and the comforting pop that can be found in their intersection.

The sleek shuffle of “Killing Time: was up next, as ‘tis on the album. The smooth, driving bass was a jolting difference from their first track, the band already showcasing the variety of styles they incorporate. The song builds up to a noodly guitar solo and a MGMT’s “Flash Delirium”-esque chanting refrain. A little bit “Another Brick in the Wall,” a little haunting, a little eerie, and a lot of fun.

Next up: no, not the Wii Sports Resort theme song, but rather “True Blue Interlude,” a sort of advertisement for an improved version of yourself… the purest you, presumably a post-chrysalis version of yourself after having your Imaginal Disk inserted. “Implanted, impatient, impossible. Memory, mirror, and membrane. It’s here, it’s you. Imaginal Disk” is the new “easy, breezy, beautiful. CoverGirl.”

This theme of transhumanism carried on into “Image,” which, for me, was the most exciting single from the new record; one which conveys the themes and concepts of the album explicitly. Basically, you, the listener, are waiting in the lobby of a company that will create a better version of yourself via some fried sci-fi process. 22 more minutes. Those purring synths through the chorus, led by a gloriously cheesy sci-fi lead. Electric cowbell, random percussive flourishes, and a huge chorus. This one kicked ass. “Oh my God… Meet your brand new Image,” Mica sang to herself in the two-way mirror, anticipating the possibility of meeting the purest version of herself.

“Secrets (Your Fire),” the first song I had ever heard by the band, followed. For “Secrets,” Mica ups her Britney-esque baby voice, and the dance-y beat goes hand in hand with the singsongy vocals. If you get a chance, listen to some of Mica’s soloed takes for this song because it will give you a greater appreciation for all the little layers, including video game dialogue samples and voice notes uploaded to Splice. All of it adds to the chaotic, futuristic vision.

One of their more straightforward (if you can call it that) tunes, “You Lose!,” came next. This one rules and is probably as close to a garage rocker as Mag Bay has put out. Of course, there is still chiptune video game-y synths and jittering melodies layered over top, but this is a Mag Bay song I could actually imagine another band recording– which is not usually the case.

“Death & Romance” featured zipping sliding bass lines introducing a very catchy hook, making this one of their more singable tracks. The chorus, to this simple review, always sounds like it wants to resolve like that Kooks song “…that I’m not fond of asking” part, but maybe that’s just me. This one went straight into “Fear, Sex,” a song with a moment of an absolutely fried arpeggiated soundscape that can only be described as how it feels to chew Five gum.

The other half of the duo, Matt Lewin, spent much of the show swapping guitar and bass back and forth (a very sexy Meteora Player Plus; a guitar I have been saving up to buy for months but now I can’t cuz I would be jacking his swag) with backing player Myles Sweeney, who would switch between guitar, bass, and keys. For the most part, Matt sported a Nord Stage 4, which is an overwhelming synth, just looking at all the controls on it gives me a headache. 

Mica covered the entire stage extremely well, often twirling around, bopping from one corner to the other. In fact, whether up on her riser, speaking to herself in the mirror video wall, or singing side by side next to Matt, Mica was on the move almost the entire time, only stopping to occasionally rest for a moment in a very comfy-looking chair far stage right.

Side note, I later found out that this chair seems like it’s used during their VIP set, where it’s often just Mica singing with Matt on his keyboard, no backing tracks. I didn’t see this set, but my investigative research indicates that here in Nashville they played “Top Dog,” which I was kinda hoping for in the main set, and “Drive Alone,” a song they rarely play live anymore. Watching some of these VIP videos on YouTube, it’s honestly kind of crazy these songs still sound good underneath all the effects, software instrumentation, and shiny production. With all that stripped back, you definitely see a different version of these songs lying within– a sort of deconstruction that shows even without all their production flourish, there’s a foundation of really solid songwriting.

Around this point in the set, Mica sat down in said comfy chair, as The Doctor, a menacing Dorito-headed man with Lisa Simpson’s haircut, emerged from sidestage. He proceeded to insert something in between a CD and Laserdisc into her forehead region, resulting in what seemed to be some sort of transformation. Lights strobed dramatically and faded out. I was not expecting to see an actual recreation of the artwork and backdrop brought to life in front of my eyes, but it made for a pretty cool segue. 

After a moment of electric darkness, Mica emerged back onstage with a sunflower framing her face as the cutesy beginning of “Vampire in the Corner” started. About two-thirds of the way through this song, the live drums kick in and this really buzzy, drippy ascending synth line was like ecstasy to my ears. Comparing the first couple seconds of this song to the final chorus is pretty nuts, how insane it builds up into a wall-of-sound frenzy. Pretty wild how her screaming up on her center stage riser makes  “I wanna make you mine / told you a thousand times / you’re my valentine” sound like a threat.

The outro of “Vampire” blended into the beginning of “Watching T.V.,” which is maybe my favorite Mag Bay song. The lackadaisical beat and noodly synths give way to some real reverby harp lines and hard-to-place percussive ear candy. That part about a minute in, when she says “If you wanna be clean, you got to scrub until the blood comes out” is quite simply one of the coolest sounding moments I’ve ever heard. Arcadey synths whirring, gem tones glistening… “It’s time to meet the monsters inside you” makes me feel like the wolf-ripping-his-shirt-off meme. I haven’t been taking videos at concerts very much lately, but I had to whip it out for the climax of this song (my phone). This song is one of the best examples of how unpredictable their songs are. The first time I heard it, I’m pretty sure I shit my pants. Unfortunately, this time, seeing it live was no different.

After a quick trip to the bathroom, naturally, “Tunnel Vision” proceeded. The rhythm switching up to halftime really worked live, which surprised me, as it never quite clicked with me on the recorded version. There was a certain expansiveness, a particular spectacle articulated that forced you to be on the same page as them, guided by their tempo changes and intensely varied lighting cues. Needless to say, the outro also hit way harder live, when Matt’s guitar-chugging led the band into what turned into a heavy metal, double bass drilling, crash cymbals flying jam. For a moment I thought I was at a friggin’ Avenged Sevenfold show.

After this was the slunky “Love Is Everywhere,” the kind of song that makes you want to frolic in a field and sprout a flower out of your head in a gesture of goodwill towards all. Listeners may recognize the instrumental from the psychedelic Lil Yachty track “running out of time,” produced by… Mag Bay. I’ve heard it’s an interesting entry into Yachty’s catalog, from an artist I really like. Following this one was an instrumental break, in which drummer Nick Villa went absolutely dummy for quite some time, booming double kick and huge tom rolls in a feverish crescendo.

Speaking of the drumming, I’ll use this as exigence to shout out to Villa… the man truly confirmed the age-old adage that when arranging a live set, the first thing you need to bring out of the backing tracks are the drums. His work behind the kit was a little bit fucking crazy, and especially blended with drum machine tracks or other samples, gave a whole new dimension to the entire show overall. Later finding out that the man has a background in metal, which makes total sense- some of his fills are absurd and add a tremendous amount of low end with his tom work.

Mica emerged from this short break in a new costume, a red dress with planets(?) attached, for another fan-favorite from Mercurial World, the four-on-the-floor thumper “Chaeri.” The sweeping synth lines sounded expansive and full, ultimately making for a much better experience than the recorded version. Although this song is pretty huge, it seems simple when compared to some of their newer songs an indicator of how much their sound has advanced in the two years that have passed between the band’s long-form releases.

Before diving into the home stretch of the headliner’s set, I want to talk about the opener Nourished by Time. I was super excited to see this artist was opening, because he has had a ton of critical hype around his Erotic Probiotic albums, as well as a lot of people recommending his Catching Chickens EP released in March of this year. I definitely remember the first time I listened to Erotic Probiotics 2. I was hoping to catch up on some new releases and just threw it on streaming, and immediately was like, “Damn, this aint background music.” I had to go back and listen a little more intently as soon as I got the chance. Although the project sometimes performs as a band, this evening was a solo performance by Marcus Brown.

Featuring hazy, lo-fi, drum machine-based production and very wide-sounding vocals, Marcus sang while triggering samples or playing synth lines in his MIDI keyboard and laptop. He gave off a somewhat mysterious persona while still seeming like an all around cool guy. He seems like a very zen fellow, even down to his stage banter. I didn’t really know any of his songs well enough to sing along to, other than some of “Hell of a Ride” or “Daddy,” but the entire crowd was quite entranced by this soulful performance.

Unfortunately, this wound up being his only show of the entire tour! The next day, Marcus dropped off any additional dates due to a burst eardrum and a problem in his wrist. What’s interesting is that, he was clearly wearing a compression glove thing on his wrist, but in almost all of my photos he is curling or moving or flexing or air-bending in some way throughout the performance. I hope that’s not what did him in! His gesticulations- puffing himself up, extending and swinging his arms to add physical credence to a lyric– were one of the best aspects of his show. This was one feature of his stage presence that seemed very larger-than-life and allowed him to fill up the stage all by himself.

Back to our regularly scheduled programming:

By now Mica was wearing some sort of lava monster get-up, complete with spiky shoulder and a crown of stalagmites. “That’s My Floor,” a funky song about attaining transcendence through some sort of elevator of the mind, saw the band at maybe their most la-la-la pop-single-y, despite a pretty aggressive synth riff that sounds like an overdriven guitar (or was it a guitar that sounds like a distorted synth?), and a bridge that gives us another taste of being trapped inside Tron.

The vaporwave-adjacent, swangin’ “Cry For Me,” was another highlight of the evening, the kind of song that makes you want to be driving real fast out of some floating city as a blue sun sets in front of you. Towards the end of this song the funky bassline and skittish broken chords were bolstered by lush strings and grand piano octaves, making for an extremely grandiose, cinematic moment, definitely worth blowing out your stereo system on.

They then did crowd favorite “Killshot,” before a dramatic tempo change, lights changing from a saturated red to blue, going straight into the Slowed + Reverb version of the same song. I could see this being annoying for a band that has many songs way better than this, but both versions remain some of their most streamed songs due to thirsty fan edits of it going viral, so I definitely get it. In fact, in one of their many TikTok videos discussing various nuances of being an up-and-coming band in today’s messed-up music industry, they made a video explaining their decision to officially release the other version of the song, and I really respect their transparency when it comes to discussing topics like licensing, synch, song usage, and the disrespectful pittance that streaming services pay artists. They are real enough to point these things out and detail what it’s like for them in the music business and I really respect that.

“Angel on a Satellite” provided an interesting late set break and change up of energy. The piano-based ballad has a real ’90s pop song vibe, and offered a moment of respite before ramping it back up to end their show. “The Ballad of Matt & Mica” closed their main set, as it closes their album, with a callback repurposing “She Looked Like Me!”’s “bang bang and a happy ending” melody which had a strong bookend effect, kind of giving some resolution to the interaction with her mysterious doppelgänger from the first song.

How do you end a show leaving the audience wanting more? How do you end a 21-song set ensuring people will be coming to see you next time you’re in town and scaled up? My best answer would be closing with “The Beginning,” by Magdalena Bay, a confusingly disgusting pop song. The lighting for this song truly went sicko mode, with each LED cycling hues, giving an impression that the audience was entering the kaleidoscope that Mica’s singing about. After hitting us with the classic one-song “sit back, enjoy the show” encore, they exited the stage and the applause was deafening, like people couldn’t believe what they just saw. 

Their DIY greenscreen videos, made famous on TikTok and Reels, are a little bit Xavier Renegade Angel, a little bit Third Policeman, a little bit Tim and Eric, and a lotta bit fun. Eyeballs, looping GIFs of scattered and billowing clouds, plants growing in fast-motion, insects kissing, Chrysalises transforming, 3D models of hands holding orbs, skinned Teletubbies, triangles intersecting. Vaguely cursed graphics as if you have Lawnmower Man-style hooked your brain into the source of nature itself. Their online, vaguely Y2K aesthetic is present throughout the show, curated for each specific song, but is never over-the-top or distracting in the way a standard video wall or projected overlay might be otherwise. To be able to incorporate their multimedia productions into their live set in a way that only adds, never detracts, from the experience of their live set is very cool. You can look stage left if you want to engage, or simply ignore it if not. Specific moments are constructed to draw your attention in one way or the other, but never distracts from the musicianship at play onstage.

If you were interested in the very peculiar visuals throughout their show, I encourage you to go to the Imaginal Disk website, where you can play a point-and-click, Choose Your Own Adventure style game and find out more about the Imaginal Disk lore. Honestly, it’s a fun time, and reminded me of old games on the Homestar Runner website which flooded me with nostalgia.

I didn’t stick around much after the show, but according to some people on Twitter, the band themselves are as patient and chill as their online persona appears to be, hanging with some fans and signing posters, etc. Honestly it’s insane they seem to actually be as chill as they present themselves on their live streams.

Notably not gearheads themselves, Mad Bay lets a lot of electronic instruments and plugins do the talking. In fact, the main pieces of hardware I have heard them talking about are the Prophet Rev2 and, to a lesser extent, the Korg Minilogue for some small touches on Imaginal Disk. According to Mica, the Omnisphere is her main go-to software synth, and boy does this album sell it. 

If you are a musician or producer and give Magdalena Bay a listen, one of the first questions you may ask is: How? The production on their albums is truly something unique, and there is nothing I can think of that sounds quite like it.

This past April, Matt and Mica got together for a very thorough livestream where they broke down each track on 2022’s Mercurial World, painstakingly solo-ing each stem and showing how they built the mix. Some of the arrangements on this album have to be seen to be believed, the most sparse of which still contains nearly 100 individual tracks. It takes Matt’s computer several moments to pull up each Logic file, as the processor scans each individual recording, applying many plugins to each, and synthesizes them all together. Matt and Mica then painstakingly go through each layer, peeling back, much like an onion, ultimately showing what makes their dense sonic space sound so damn sweet. Usually they start with a drum machine or loop, then solo out every input from the live kit, then move to bass, guitars, synths and vocals last. It is very amusing to see Matt, who is clearly a production savant, try to remember why he thought it was necessary to use six different bass tracks on the verse of one song, but in a moment of confusion, never second-guesses himself, because the final product speaks for itself, justifying whatever strange alchemy went into it.

They also took the time and care to respond to basically every question asked by the group chat while they did this. Curious producers asked about the technical side of the process. What is this plugin doing  here? What parameters were on this EQ? What was the threshold on the sidechained compressor here? Fans asked about the inspiration, the creative side of the process. The band took time to get everyone on the same page, and it really felt like a community getting a peek behind the curtain in the most chill way possible. Any time anyone asks how they learned how to do this stuff, the answer is the same. YouTube tutorials. If that isn’t inspiring, I don’t know what is. 

One moment from this livestream that really stood out to me was when breaking down “Secrets,” a live commenter asked about recording takes or committing to audio something that could be perceived as cringe. Mica thoughtfully responded that you can’t be afraid of that while immersed in the creative process, and it’s best to keep reminding yourself that there is a context for each individual take. You have to think about your work as a whole and the little details will fall into place or something. This is something I have been thinking about lately, and I think it’s something to keep reminding yourself, whether about the creative process or life in general. Basically. you think you just fell out of the coconut tree. 

To me, this openness with their creative process is something novel, something truly inspiring to show how certain songs were brought to life. This is the democratization of music production. I can’t overstate how fucking cool it is to see under the hood of such calculated chaos. It doesn’t take the magic away, it explains its trick right in front of your eyes and makes the feat that much more impressive.

I can’t wait for them to give Imaginal Disk this same treatment whenever they feel enough distance to get up in the guts of these tracks and show the magic behind the scenes. I’ll be first in line to see how they pulled off some of the sonic tricks and treats of this feat of modern musical engineering.

Overall, I had no idea how this album would be brought to life in a live setting, or whether it would feel artificial with reliance on specific backing tracks or whatever, but I was blown away by the care and showmanship by which this set came to life.

It’s a good time to be a fan of Magdalena Bay. The groundswell was already in place well before this tremendous album was released. What we are seeing is the hard work starting to pay off for a band that has been putting in the work, streamlining the at-home production, and bettering their song craft and live delivery of it in every dimension.

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Setlist:

She Looked Like Me!
Killing Time
True Blue Interlude
Image
Secrets (Your Fire)
You Lose!
Death & Romance
Fear, Sex
Vampire in the Corner
Watching T.V.
Tunnel Vision
Love Is Everywhere
Feeling DiskInserted?
Chaeri
That’s My Floor
Cry for Me
Killshot
Dreamcatching
Angel on a Satellite
The Ballad of Matt & Mica

The Beginning