Review: Magdalena Bay – Imaginal Disk
Music
Magdalena Bay
Imaginal Disk
Mom + Pop Music
Street: 08.23
Magdalena Bay = Britney Spears x Grimes x Sleigh Bells
Before Magdalena Bay’s Imaginal Disk, the last time I remember an album making me feel as carefree and vibrant was when I would obsessively listen to Hilary Duff’s 2003 album Metamorphosis on my portable white CD player that was covered in rhinestones. It’s no secret that a new era of female-fronted pop is upon us once again. Or did it ever really leave?
A project of the Los Angeles-based duo Mica Tenenbaum (singer) and Matthew Lewin (multi-instrumentalist), Imaginal Disk is Magdalena Bay’s sophomore album—and in it, they’re hitting their stride. Though the album’s 15 tracks harken back to the best Y2K tracks of yore, it’s much more than a pop record: sprinkles of modern synth tones, groove-inducing basslines and a hint of progressive rock bring surprising differentiation to every track. The subject matter is distinctly futuristic, too—it’s a loose concept album about someone who receives a consciousness upgrade through an “imaginal disk.” Perhaps Magdalena Bay is singing about where we’ll be in 25 years?
The imaginal disk “wakes up” the album’s main character, True, who tells of her newly realized reality throughout the album. Music box tones kick off the odyssey in “She Looked Like Me!,” which layers into an anthem where True is sweetly choked to death by a version of herself in an alternate reality—one where she marries a military man, changes her name, has a baby. Many of the record’s lyrics seem to grapple with one’s own reflection: the sensation of seeing yourself clearly for the first time and reckoning with what’s there. “Never really noticed I’m the transcendental type,” True admits on the party track “That’s My Floor.”
The album bridges divides between disparate genres, from the hyperpop tones of “Tunnel Vision” to the piano-forward disco track “Cry For Me.” Every song takes the listener for a ride and ends up dropping them somewhere different than where they imagined they’d be, but it’s not all sparkles and dance breaks. The sci-fi tones underlying many of the songs on Imaginal Disk are distinctly eerie, even cautionary: “It’s gonna rot you from the inside out … Slip your skin right off and hang it out,” Tenenbaum coos on “Watching T.V.,” a symbolic contemplation of technological overconsumption complete with a dash of body horror. In contrast, other tracks are unapologetically transhumanist, with the character of True praising human/tech convergence in an almost reverent manner. The atmospheric track “Feeling DiskInserted?” features just a few lyrics of worship: “Look inside, through the sky / All around us,” Tenenbaum sings. “Angel on a satellite / Glad you found us.”
On multiple songs throughout the album, Tenenbaum incorporates the word “Hello” into her lyrics—sometimes as a statement, sometimes as a question—like she’s toying with the limits and consciousness of technology itself. “Say hello, it’s you, the purest you … Instinctive, impatient, impossible / In memory, mirror and membrane,” Tenenbaum sings on “True Blue Interlude.” Though humanity likely won’t be inserting disks into foreheads in the near future (as portrayed on the Imaginal Disk album cover), it’s already becoming difficult to determine where the human ends and technology begins. And may I remind you of Neuralink? We’ve already created a new species of “conscious” beings who could soon host an Imaginal Disk dance party of their own. They say “Hello” right back. –Mekenna Malan
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