Great pop music tells a story. It sometimes suffices to share a feeling, but storytelling is at the heart of all great songwriting.
This storytelling does not have to be explicit; you can sometimes follow an implied storyline through to its conclusion and absorb its central themes and messages through the music. Magdalena Bay proved masters at this implicit storytelling with a magically light touch in their recent sold-out performance at 9:30 Club.
The Los Angeles pop duo visited 9:30 Club for an early show on Sept. 21 in support of their second studio album, Imaginal Disk, released in August through Mom + Pop Music. They opened with the album track “She Looked Like Me!” This number set the tone for the show and the album, as frontwoman Mica Tenenbaum imagines an idealized version of herself through her travels. Through the clever use of a portal “mirror” on the stage, Mica is able to gaze at this vision of herself and interact with other sometimes fantastic elements of her dreams throughout the concert.
Some of the more fantastic elements manifest themselves in the portal throughout the show such as with the album track “That’s My Floor,” a song about desire and opportunity. Mica appears through the portal as a mystic figure, ready to take what she can claim. The song leaned into neo-psychedelia, which suited the Magdalena’s trippy vision of discovery.
Watch the official music video for “That’s My Floor” by Magdalena Bay on YouTube:
For the show, Mica dressed casually but functionally, appearing as if she were a spritely ballerina, ready to transform into the images she watched through her technologically empowered portal. Her bandmates, including collaborator Matthew Lewin (who played keyboards and guitar), kept to the background, allowing Mica to occupy the front of the stage as she prowled and twirled — and even sat to the side in a comfy chair on occasion!
Magdalena Bay ended the show on the Imaginal Disk’s “The Ballad of Matt and Mica,” a rather on-the-nose toast to the band’s principals musical and vocational voyage to become who they are today. Still, the song spoke to a dream that fit the theme, and an idea that the audience readily embraced.
The band’s one-song encore, “The Beginning,” looked back to Magdalena Bay’s first album, Mercurial World. They actually peppered their set with a half dozen of that record’s tracks, and “The Beginning” was a nice place to look back on Magdalena’s Bay work so far.
Magdalena Bay are headed for bigger things, and I fully expect them to perform in bigger spaces like The Anthem by the time they are ready for their third full-length album. The band clearly have some exciting stories yet to tell.
Here are some photos of Magdalena Bay performing at 9:30 Club on Sept. 21, 2024. All pictures by Mickey McCarter.
