It has been a while since an album piqued my attention in the way that Magdalena Bay’s sophomore album, Imaginal Disk, has. Immediately, I was captured by the magnitude of this album. Both in length, running just shy of an hour, and in soundscape—the record is a behemoth. From start to finish, it feels like you’re in a completely cohesive world built by Mica Tenenbaum and Matthew Lewin, despite the constant genre-bending and lyrical frailty.
It is ultimately a pop record, but there is nothing conventional about it. We are whipped between synth-pop, disco, angelic reverbs, soft piano, and frantic horns. It is incredibly dynamic, building up and up in magnitude while simultaneously crumbling apart. Mica’s intoxicating vocals are soft and scratchy simultaneously, as she screams “She looked like me” on the opening track. We are then taken from ethereal pop into a metal whirlwind at the end of “Killing Time.” On songs such as, “Image,” “Vampire in The Corner,” and “That’s My Floor,” the huge bass sounds feel like the inside of your brain is being exfoliated.
It is hard to say exactly what the tone of the album is. The shimmery pop-ness of the songs almost feels like a disguise. It’s like a sugar-coated paranoia; I’m happy when I listen to the music – it’s very danceable with catchy hooks and playful melodies, but it makes me feel subtly panicked and existential. There is a darkness to the narrative; “Death & Romance” is a cute, disco-inspired song, but the lyrical content, comparing love to our inevitable demise, leaves me feeling weird and unsettled. Even a song such as “Love is Everywhere,” which is supposedly hopeful, has this fever-dream-like quality to it, with vocal pitch bends that seem to distance you slightly from reality.
Imaginal Disk is the kind of album I see myself returning to for years to come. There is so much to uncover in the production and thematically. The listening experience is comparable to the feeling of drinking too much coffee several days in a row; you are wired, but exhausted, feeling slightly off, but you cannot resist the deliciousness so you pour another cup. I am genuinely addicted.
