Imaginal Representative: An Analysis of Magdalena Bay’s Latest Record Pt.1
By Rene Jimenez
Pop music has been the comfortable genre of the average person’s brain. The “vanilla” genre of music, that’s to say, is enjoyable and popular, but it is safe. Things have shifted in recent memory as it's become a main genre in the rotation of music fans in search of something a bit more artistic or “different”.Main artists and groups that are labeled as “genre-pushing” are Carly Rae Jepsen, LCD Soundsystem, Caroline Polachek, Kero Kero Bonito, and Charli XCX, who has enjoyed a summer of mainstream resurgence after being considered an overlooked darling for the past decade.
Magdalena Bay is here to add to this genre-bending sound, and the duo is comprised of Mica Tenenbaum and Matthew Lewin. Although they’ve been making music for a little over five years, their latest record “Imaginal Disk” basks in the glory of synthpop and cements their importance in the genre. Where hooks aren’t derivative, and production is complex without sounding expensive and safe.
The record explodes with the track “She Looked Like Me!” Describing a vague scene where in two people unite, change their name in holy matrimony, and have a baby “Two kids and a military turn their tongue, change their name lo-love, born to marry... One year, then a baby’s carried”. This story is followed by the line “Grows up young, screams at graves” which highlights a soft childhood of this pairing's offspring, growing up young as opposed to having to mature fast due to a bad circumstance, while also possessing a natural fear of death.
The song continues with “Kid hears ghosts singing his name likes guns and he’s pistol-ready that’s his curse, that’s my name”; perhaps Tennenbaum is speaking to our American sensibilities towards violence and how we all share a name under the same country calling ourselves “American” where gun violence is customary. “He sings up to the Moon unchaining, the child remains innocent as they beckon for the tides to change in his favor, so that he may not have to be “pistol-ready”.
At its center, the opening track is a surprisingly critical depiction of America. This is until the song abruptly shifts from this child to a woman who walks incontaining recognizable eyes and feeling like a dream “I didn’t know what to think she looked like me,” revealing a central theme of identity and foreshadowing a dichotomy of violence and love present throughout the record. Mica stands mirrored to the woman before recounting that this mystery woman shoots at her. “And then she wrapped her hands around my neck, and I felt love just ordinary love;” again, this other woman who is her exact replica hurts her and it’s the same as any neutral love. It’s an expression of passive self-cruelty where even if you can look in the mirror and see yourself as indescribable as a dream, you still desire to hurt yourself as much as you do love yourself.
Nothing is different from the other side of that glass, just as nothing is different about the American experience. These two themes culminate in the lines “America stole my fate” and “turn my tongue, changed my name”, which I tookthe former to mean America stole an innocence from a child through violence. Then through conjunction with the latter line and from a feminist perspective, it could be Mica describing how her ability to marry peacefully and begin a nuclear family isn’t true or it isn’t what she wants. She’s rejecting the same thing as everyone else while clinging to it. Opting to “marry” herself which ultimately isn’t harmful or all too different from whatever version of love is considered the standard. It’s not exactly satisfying, but it’s familiar.
The next song, “Killing Time”, takes a violent approach to the phrase “how we live our days is how we live our lives” illuminating even more dissatisfaction with the self. Mica performs the nightly ritual of counting sheep waiting for sleep to come in, lamenting “Oh, always killing time”. Spending the day waiting for the night, holding innocuous conversations away from someone you love, counting sheep before bed; it is all just time spent before doing the thing you look forward to. Sadly, that is where most of the time goes, is towards waiting. “I don’t care if I don’t sleep but someone better pine for me, yeah without love, I’m without me;” this yearning for affection reveals that for her everything outside of love is meaningless. “Oh, never getting mine always killing time” expresses that without anything to look forward to, every moment feels morewasted and even more crushing.
Age, responsibilities, and monotony all come from time without a single benefit to reap. She’s never getting anything she wants while hating how her time is spent. The outro really hones in on themes of self-imprisonment by being a victim to time; “I’m looking in the mirror and swallowing the key it only takes a minute to forget a week count up all the years that we spend asleep if time is meant for living, why is it killing me?. I have often wondered myself about how much I could accomplish if not for needing to sleep, and if I did not partake in vices that are actively damaging to my long-term goals in life. Counting up the wasted time and examining your wasted potential is a terrifying reflection. Leaving yourself in a perpetual state of doubt and wondering over what could have been.
“True Blue Interlude” is something of an advertisement within the lore of the album. Promising a new version of you that you can be satisfied with, “it’s you the purest you”. This claim of a truest version of you also alludes to the opening track and the previous one with lines like, “ten years or ten minutes ago, reflected in my eyes or floating behind yours”. This confirms time as an illusion that keeps chaining our protagonist with an unsatisfying view of the self while simultaneously confirming that the woman who looked like her, she was left in awe by is her. It’s her purest form and a reflection made tangible; this interlude gives the listener a moment to pause to understand exactly what the record aims to tackle. It’s like the album's loose thesis.
Continuing this theme of reflection and personal identity is the record's most popular track, “Image”, understandably so as the chorus is very catchy and important to one of the most rewarding payoffs of the album. The first verse begins with, “What’s the best you’ve got? I forgot all my common sense I need all the common sense;” this speaks to a need that works to believe that nothing is good enough, including self-image. The verse finishes with “I need confidence, confidence in medicine”, which can translate to believing that something like a medical procedure or substance would be the thing to fix this self-image. This is better helped by the accompanying surreal music video, which shows Mica being picked up and prodded in strange ways by various tools while her features are exaggerated to a comedic extent. Breaking into the aforementioned catchy chorus, “But oh, my God Twenty-two more minutes Oh, so hot Meet your brand-new image”. This countdown presented is a funsegway into the track that will play 22 minutes from this song that ties this theme of self-image together, while also being set up for a change in lyrics for the final repeat of the chorus.
Instead of this protagonist counting down the minutes they are stating “But oh, my God Make me in your image”. Perhaps the “oh, my God” isn’t a general declare of frustration, but is a literal pleading with God to be changed into something better and more confident. The album isn’t necessarily meant to be consumed with a religious undertone in mind, but it is worth considering that any “God” or “creator” in mind could be outside the self, or just the protagonist speaking completely about themselves. After all, being your own kind of God is just as terrifying of a revelation as something being out of your control. If responsibility and confidence are completely in your control, then you hope you’re a kind God and not one focused on killing time and making a brand new you.