Somewhere in the ether/net of our collective social cosmos soup floats the magical, masterful pop music of Magdalena Bay, the duo from Los Angeles composed of Mica Tenenbaum and Matthew Lewin. While the pair may claim California as its terra firma, its true home is in the clouds, from where the two emit and output the unique yet familiar frequencies of synthesized nostalgia, kitschy catchiness, and bombastically warped neo-hooks for which the group has become celebrated. Transmitting in both the audio and video realms, Magdalena Bay is an entity adroitly suited for these times, caught in a haze of the known and felt while pushing sonic landscapes woven with the now into the next.
Having met as teenagers in a high school music program in their hometown of Miami (Tenebaum having moved to Florida at age 1 from Buenos Aires), each quickly recognized a kismet and kindred spirit in the other, resulting in the formation of a band, the prog outfit Tabula Rasa, as well as a romance. Lewin was a self-styled guitar shredder armed with his dad's prog and concept rock records -- The Wall, The Bends, Genesis, Fiona Apple -- while Tenenbaum was a pianist and singer dipping toes in indie (Modest Mouse) and emo (My Chemical Romance) rock as well as pop made by princesses (Shakira, Britney). Both could read music and Lewin had even studied music theory, also teaching himself how to produce, record, and mix while making two Tabula Rasa records. The pair took a brief break from dating and headed to different colleges but kept the band together, often trading eight-hour bus rides from Penn to Northeastern and vice versa to rehearse, before eventually realizing two things: one, their relationship was too real to be denied, and two, no one young likes prog.
"It was like, 'No one's listening to our prog music, what a shame,'" Tenebaum says with a laugh. "We were excited to try something different. So we got into the mechanics of 'what does it mean to write a pop song?' and 'what is this craft?' and that was the beginning of Magdalena Bay."
"I remember thinking, 'Pop music is simple, so we should be able to make it,'" Lewin says. "And then, of course, there's way more to it, lots of complexities in the writing and production that I wasn't aware of. We had no artistic perspective at that point because we were still figuring out the genre and how to make something that resembled pop music before we could think about how we could make it interesting. So that was our early process."
Holding tight to that all-encompassing genre descriptor ("We make pop, but what really is pop anyway?" Tenenbaum asks, while Lewin counters, "We're a pop group making pop music; all the rest is implied...I think it's fun to imply that pop music is a wide range of things"), the duo released a grip of EPs and singles before launching its debut album Mercurial World in the fall of 2021. Many outlets, while uniformly praising its melodic hooks, sing-song vocals, and meticulously-crafted production, called it "synth-pop," which is probably the most specific subgenre Lewin and Tenenbaum will allow. Regardless, the mark had been made, and Magdalena Bay soon began to gather respect, adulation, and fans in the true currency of the day: streaming numbers, social media followers, support slots, festival appearances, and creative collabs. All the while, aided by its highly stylized online aesthetic and internet presence, the band was inching closer to realizing something of an artistic perspective after all.
"We love extending the world of our music past sound into videos or a website or graphics or whatever it might be," Tenenbaum says.
"We like to think of them as one and the same, but I think it has to start with the music," Lewin says. "We're trying to create an atmosphere or an emotional quality with it."
"It's the jumping off point that inspires the rest," Tenenbaum agrees. "But as the years have gone by, as we've made more and more videos and such, the process has become more integrated. We were having visual ideas, which was never the case before. I guess people call it 'world-building."
~~~~~~~~
Few artists are at once artful and savvy enough to transcend the endless scroll, but LA-based indie-pop duo Magdalena Bay have used social platforms to dispatch their music, and what you might call their philosophy, in hypnotic, ephemeral bursts. A long trip through their feeds produces music videos in miniature, irreverent pontifications on the state of the music industry delivered via home video VHS aesthetics, and existential meditations on everything from International Women's Day to the clone craze of the early aughts to the indefinite lifespan of plants. To Mica Tenenbaum and Matt Lewin, reality can be unmade, manipulated beyond all recognition; their project is as much musical as it is an experiment in pop persona and visual aesthetics.
Approaching reality as a construct allows Magdalena Bay to enact their own, one that is committed to nothing but expanding the possible. Even the album's sequencing hints at the eternal: the first track is titled "The End," the last is "The Beginning," forming a perfect loop when you listen to it straight through. "Matt, Matt, wake up!" Tenenbaum whispers on the introductory track. "I was thinking about how there's no true end to anything/ Everything comes from and goes to the same place: NOWHERE."
"Mercurial World has a lot of outsized themes on it, like destiny, death, and doing the impossible," Tenenbaum explains. "It's not exactly a concept album, but we love prog-rock, so we love a concept."
Tenenbaum and Lewin met over a decade ago at an after-school music program in their hometown of Miami, where they bonded over a shared love of Genesis and King Crimson, eventually starting a prog-rock band together that lasted until they moved away to college. The two reconnected after freshman year and decided to continue their teen rock project, this time in a radically new form that would come to be Magdalena Bay. "We started discovering all of this experimental pop music that pushed the boundaries of what 'pop' really means," Lewin says.
Bleeding-edge producers like Charli XCX and Grimes were a gateway, and by 2019, Magdalena Bay self-released their debut collection, mini mix vol. 1, followed soon after by a slew of one-off singles, all of which arrived accompanied by tricked-out videos. "Those early references have gotten more and more dissolved as we've come into our own sound," Tenenbaum says. "Our philosophy was just to throw things at the wall. I like to think that our music lives between genres." In 2020, Magdalena Bay debuted A Little Rhythm and a Wicked Feeling, an EP that included the song "Killshot," which went viral when anime communities on YouTube and TikTok created fancams and choreographed dances to it. When the band's growing fanbase demanded a slowed down version of the track, the duo obliged.
The EP landed them opening slots on sold-out tours with Kero Kero Bonito and Yumi Zouma, but when the COVID-19 pandemic arrived stateside, they were forced back into isolation, a state they fortunately thrive in. The pair met the moment; they upped their online presence and began streaming sets on Twitch, organically building a following while much of the world was stuck inside. "We spend all of our time together, and in some ways Mercurial World is about that particular sense of madness in containment," Lewin says. "We live together and make art together; this immerses you in our creative, insular universe."
On the title track, Tenenbaum sings directly to her bandmate against a glitzy backdrop punctuated by chiptunish blips: "You'll be around always/ Holding me down/ Living in a mercurial world." The Madonna interpolation contributes to the sense that Magdalena Bay operate on a space-time continuum that is uncanny, at once familiar and not. "Many of the lyrics express anxiety about losing time," Tenenbaum says. The high dramatics of "You Lose!" align with the penultimate, throbbing club track "Dreamcatching" as both reflect on the terrorizing realization that everyone eventually runs out of it. More specifically: "'You Lose!' is about the industry, and the anxiety that comes with trying to be a musician and maybe not quite making it," Lewin says.
Words like "anxiety" and "paranoia" come up regularly when Magdalena Bay describe their debut, but the production is beyond confident. Tracks flit between genre trappings with the ease of a band who reject the need to present any one way. "Hysterical Us" is propelled by sweeping instrumental flourishes that recall the blown-out aesthetics of a closing number in a way over-budget stadium set, while a snare snaps like a funkified house song on the bass-heavy "Secrets (Your Fire)." Their confidence overwhelms midway through "Chaeri," when Tenenbaum pleads for forgiveness while a soundscape so vast and thunderous threatens to consume her. But even as they dabble in darkness, Magdalena Bay do so without ever dragging you down into it. You can hear the band's reverence for Electric Light Orchestra in it, who they describe as "grandiose, but still cheeky."
The same descriptor can be applied to Mercurial World. On this album, Magdalena Bay offer the listener a prismatic experience, one that is built on a desire to simply believe in something beyond the finitude of our lives. It's not religion, it's not spirituality; it's this music, this moment. The album closes with "The Beginning," a discotheque ready call-back to "The End" that momentarily resolves all of Magdalena Bay's late-night philosophical questions. "Matt, go back to sleep. I think I've finally got it all figured out," Tenenbaum whispers. "Like a butterfly floating in amber, we've made this moment eternal."
~~~~~~~~
"Sporting a skittering drum bass that's beat is peppered with steel drums and tropical synths, "TELLY BAG" gives off laidback vibes, exuding the same effortless chicness that one would expect from a fashion-focused bop." - Paper Magazine
"Grab your Telfar bag and run Bayli's chic and pulse-racing pop track "Telly Bag" back." - NYLON
"Bayli's no stranger to killer beats and funky bass lines" - Billboard
"There's an effortless breeziness to "Telly Bag," specifically the way in which BAYLI's lyrics project a keen pursuit of glamor while not forgetting financial realities... its approachable and chic energy feels aligned with the utilitarian accessory that has become the go-to style choice of young queer people and people of color in the past few years." - The FADER
"[BAYLI's] music isn't bound by categories but instead sends a direct message to those who relate the most" - Hypebae
show less
Having met as teenagers in a high school music program in their hometown of Miami (Tenebaum having moved to Florida at age 1 from Buenos Aires), each quickly recognized a kismet and kindred spirit in the other, resulting in the formation of a band, the prog outfit Tabula Rasa, as well as a romance. Lewin was a self-styled guitar shredder armed with his dad's prog and concept rock records -- The Wall, The Bends, Genesis, Fiona Apple -- while Tenenbaum was a pianist and singer dipping toes in indie (Modest Mouse) and emo (My Chemical Romance) rock as well as pop made by princesses (Shakira, Britney). Both could read music and Lewin had even studied music theory, also teaching himself how to produce, record, and mix while making two Tabula Rasa records. The pair took a brief break from dating and headed to different colleges but kept the band together, often trading eight-hour bus rides from Penn to Northeastern and vice versa to rehearse, before eventually realizing two things: one, their relationship was too real to be denied, and two, no one young likes prog.
"It was like, 'No one's listening to our prog music, what a shame,'" Tenebaum says with a laugh. "We were excited to try something different. So we got into the mechanics of 'what does it mean to write a pop song?' and 'what is this craft?' and that was the beginning of Magdalena Bay."
"I remember thinking, 'Pop music is simple, so we should be able to make it,'" Lewin says. "And then, of course, there's way more to it, lots of complexities in the writing and production that I wasn't aware of. We had no artistic perspective at that point because we were still figuring out the genre and how to make something that resembled pop music before we could think about how we could make it interesting. So that was our early process."
Holding tight to that all-encompassing genre descriptor ("We make pop, but what really is pop anyway?" Tenenbaum asks, while Lewin counters, "We're a pop group making pop music; all the rest is implied...I think it's fun to imply that pop music is a wide range of things"), the duo released a grip of EPs and singles before launching its debut album Mercurial World in the fall of 2021. Many outlets, while uniformly praising its melodic hooks, sing-song vocals, and meticulously-crafted production, called it "synth-pop," which is probably the most specific subgenre Lewin and Tenenbaum will allow. Regardless, the mark had been made, and Magdalena Bay soon began to gather respect, adulation, and fans in the true currency of the day: streaming numbers, social media followers, support slots, festival appearances, and creative collabs. All the while, aided by its highly stylized online aesthetic and internet presence, the band was inching closer to realizing something of an artistic perspective after all.
"We love extending the world of our music past sound into videos or a website or graphics or whatever it might be," Tenenbaum says.
"We like to think of them as one and the same, but I think it has to start with the music," Lewin says. "We're trying to create an atmosphere or an emotional quality with it."
"It's the jumping off point that inspires the rest," Tenenbaum agrees. "But as the years have gone by, as we've made more and more videos and such, the process has become more integrated. We were having visual ideas, which was never the case before. I guess people call it 'world-building."
~~~~~~~~
Few artists are at once artful and savvy enough to transcend the endless scroll, but LA-based indie-pop duo Magdalena Bay have used social platforms to dispatch their music, and what you might call their philosophy, in hypnotic, ephemeral bursts. A long trip through their feeds produces music videos in miniature, irreverent pontifications on the state of the music industry delivered via home video VHS aesthetics, and existential meditations on everything from International Women's Day to the clone craze of the early aughts to the indefinite lifespan of plants. To Mica Tenenbaum and Matt Lewin, reality can be unmade, manipulated beyond all recognition; their project is as much musical as it is an experiment in pop persona and visual aesthetics.
Approaching reality as a construct allows Magdalena Bay to enact their own, one that is committed to nothing but expanding the possible. Even the album's sequencing hints at the eternal: the first track is titled "The End," the last is "The Beginning," forming a perfect loop when you listen to it straight through. "Matt, Matt, wake up!" Tenenbaum whispers on the introductory track. "I was thinking about how there's no true end to anything/ Everything comes from and goes to the same place: NOWHERE."
"Mercurial World has a lot of outsized themes on it, like destiny, death, and doing the impossible," Tenenbaum explains. "It's not exactly a concept album, but we love prog-rock, so we love a concept."
Tenenbaum and Lewin met over a decade ago at an after-school music program in their hometown of Miami, where they bonded over a shared love of Genesis and King Crimson, eventually starting a prog-rock band together that lasted until they moved away to college. The two reconnected after freshman year and decided to continue their teen rock project, this time in a radically new form that would come to be Magdalena Bay. "We started discovering all of this experimental pop music that pushed the boundaries of what 'pop' really means," Lewin says.
Bleeding-edge producers like Charli XCX and Grimes were a gateway, and by 2019, Magdalena Bay self-released their debut collection, mini mix vol. 1, followed soon after by a slew of one-off singles, all of which arrived accompanied by tricked-out videos. "Those early references have gotten more and more dissolved as we've come into our own sound," Tenenbaum says. "Our philosophy was just to throw things at the wall. I like to think that our music lives between genres." In 2020, Magdalena Bay debuted A Little Rhythm and a Wicked Feeling, an EP that included the song "Killshot," which went viral when anime communities on YouTube and TikTok created fancams and choreographed dances to it. When the band's growing fanbase demanded a slowed down version of the track, the duo obliged.
The EP landed them opening slots on sold-out tours with Kero Kero Bonito and Yumi Zouma, but when the COVID-19 pandemic arrived stateside, they were forced back into isolation, a state they fortunately thrive in. The pair met the moment; they upped their online presence and began streaming sets on Twitch, organically building a following while much of the world was stuck inside. "We spend all of our time together, and in some ways Mercurial World is about that particular sense of madness in containment," Lewin says. "We live together and make art together; this immerses you in our creative, insular universe."
On the title track, Tenenbaum sings directly to her bandmate against a glitzy backdrop punctuated by chiptunish blips: "You'll be around always/ Holding me down/ Living in a mercurial world." The Madonna interpolation contributes to the sense that Magdalena Bay operate on a space-time continuum that is uncanny, at once familiar and not. "Many of the lyrics express anxiety about losing time," Tenenbaum says. The high dramatics of "You Lose!" align with the penultimate, throbbing club track "Dreamcatching" as both reflect on the terrorizing realization that everyone eventually runs out of it. More specifically: "'You Lose!' is about the industry, and the anxiety that comes with trying to be a musician and maybe not quite making it," Lewin says.
Words like "anxiety" and "paranoia" come up regularly when Magdalena Bay describe their debut, but the production is beyond confident. Tracks flit between genre trappings with the ease of a band who reject the need to present any one way. "Hysterical Us" is propelled by sweeping instrumental flourishes that recall the blown-out aesthetics of a closing number in a way over-budget stadium set, while a snare snaps like a funkified house song on the bass-heavy "Secrets (Your Fire)." Their confidence overwhelms midway through "Chaeri," when Tenenbaum pleads for forgiveness while a soundscape so vast and thunderous threatens to consume her. But even as they dabble in darkness, Magdalena Bay do so without ever dragging you down into it. You can hear the band's reverence for Electric Light Orchestra in it, who they describe as "grandiose, but still cheeky."
The same descriptor can be applied to Mercurial World. On this album, Magdalena Bay offer the listener a prismatic experience, one that is built on a desire to simply believe in something beyond the finitude of our lives. It's not religion, it's not spirituality; it's this music, this moment. The album closes with "The Beginning," a discotheque ready call-back to "The End" that momentarily resolves all of Magdalena Bay's late-night philosophical questions. "Matt, go back to sleep. I think I've finally got it all figured out," Tenenbaum whispers. "Like a butterfly floating in amber, we've made this moment eternal."
~~~~~~~~
"Sporting a skittering drum bass that's beat is peppered with steel drums and tropical synths, "TELLY BAG" gives off laidback vibes, exuding the same effortless chicness that one would expect from a fashion-focused bop." - Paper Magazine
"Grab your Telfar bag and run Bayli's chic and pulse-racing pop track "Telly Bag" back." - NYLON
"Bayli's no stranger to killer beats and funky bass lines" - Billboard
"There's an effortless breeziness to "Telly Bag," specifically the way in which BAYLI's lyrics project a keen pursuit of glamor while not forgetting financial realities... its approachable and chic energy feels aligned with the utilitarian accessory that has become the go-to style choice of young queer people and people of color in the past few years." - The FADER
"[BAYLI's] music isn't bound by categories but instead sends a direct message to those who relate the most" - Hypebae
Somewhere in the ether/net of our collective social cosmos soup floats the magical, masterful pop music of Magdalena Bay, the duo from Los Angeles composed of Mica Tenenbaum and Matthew Lewin. While the pair may claim California as its terra firma, its true home is in the clouds, from where the two emit and output the unique yet familiar frequencies of synthesized nostalgia, kitschy catchiness, and bombastically warped neo-hooks for which the group has become celebrated. Transmitting in both the audio and video realms, Magdalena Bay is an entity adroitly suited for these times, caught in a haze of the known and felt while pushing sonic landscapes woven with the now into the next.
Having met as teenagers in a high school music program in their hometown of Miami (Tenebaum having moved to Florida at age 1 from Buenos Aires), each quickly recognized a kismet and kindred spirit in the other, resulting in the formation of a band, the prog outfit Tabula Rasa, as well as a romance. Lewin was a self-styled guitar shredder armed with his dad's prog and concept rock records -- The Wall, The Bends, Genesis, Fiona Apple -- while Tenenbaum was a pianist and singer dipping toes in indie (Modest Mouse) and emo (My Chemical Romance) rock as well as pop made by princesses (Shakira, Britney). Both could read music and Lewin had even studied music theory, also teaching himself how to produce, record, and mix while making two Tabula Rasa records. The pair took a brief break from dating and headed to different colleges but kept the band together, often trading eight-hour bus rides from Penn to Northeastern and vice versa to rehearse, before eventually realizing two things: one, their relationship was too real to be denied, and two, no one young likes prog.
"It was like, 'No one's listening to our prog music, what a shame,'" Tenebaum says with a laugh. "We were excited to try something different. So we got into the mechanics of 'what does it mean to write a pop song?' and 'what is this craft?' and that was the beginning of Magdalena Bay."
"I remember thinking, 'Pop music is simple, so we should be able to make it,'" Lewin says. "And then, of course, there's way more to it, lots of complexities in the writing and production that I wasn't aware of. We had no artistic perspective at that point because we were still figuring out the genre and how to make something that resembled pop music before we could think about how we could make it interesting. So that was our early process."
Holding tight to that all-encompassing genre descriptor ("We make pop, but what really is pop anyway?" Tenenbaum asks, while Lewin counters, "We're a pop group making pop music; all the rest is implied...I think it's fun to imply that pop music is a wide range of things"), the duo released a grip of EPs and singles before launching its debut album Mercurial World in the fall of 2021. Many outlets, while uniformly praising its melodic hooks, sing-song vocals, and meticulously-crafted production, called it "synth-pop," which is probably the most specific subgenre Lewin and Tenenbaum will allow. Regardless, the mark had been made, and Magdalena Bay soon began to gather respect, adulation, and fans in the true currency of the day: streaming numbers, social media followers, support slots, festival appearances, and creative collabs. All the while, aided by its highly stylized online aesthetic and internet presence, the band was inching closer to realizing something of an artistic perspective after all.
"We love extending the world of our music past sound into videos or a website or graphics or whatever it might be," Tenenbaum says.
"We like to think of them as one and the same, but I think it has to start with the music," Lewin says. "We're trying to create an atmosphere or an emotional quality with it."
"It's the jumping off point that inspires the rest," Tenenbaum agrees. "But as the years have gone by, as we've made more and more videos and such, the process has become more integrated. We were having visual ideas, which was never the case before. I guess people call it 'world-building."
~~~~~~~~
Few artists are at once artful and savvy enough to transcend the endless scroll, but LA-based indie-pop duo Magdalena Bay have used social platforms to dispatch their music, and what you might call their philosophy, in hypnotic, ephemeral bursts. A long trip through their feeds produces music videos in miniature, irreverent pontifications on the state of the music industry delivered via home video VHS aesthetics, and existential meditations on everything from International Women's Day to the clone craze of the early aughts to the indefinite lifespan of plants. To Mica Tenenbaum and Matt Lewin, reality can be unmade, manipulated beyond all recognition; their project is as much musical as it is an experiment in pop persona and visual aesthetics.
Approaching reality as a construct allows Magdalena Bay to enact their own, one that is committed to nothing but expanding the possible. Even the album's sequencing hints at the eternal: the first track is titled "The End," the last is "The Beginning," forming a perfect loop when you listen to it straight through. "Matt, Matt, wake up!" Tenenbaum whispers on the introductory track. "I was thinking about how there's no true end to anything/ Everything comes from and goes to the same place: NOWHERE."
"Mercurial World has a lot of outsized themes on it, like destiny, death, and doing the impossible," Tenenbaum explains. "It's not exactly a concept album, but we love prog-rock, so we love a concept."
Tenenbaum and Lewin met over a decade ago at an after-school music program in their hometown of Miami, where they bonded over a shared love of Genesis and King Crimson, eventually starting a prog-rock band together that lasted until they moved away to college. The two reconnected after freshman year and decided to continue their teen rock project, this time in a radically new form that would come to be Magdalena Bay. "We started discovering all of this experimental pop music that pushed the boundaries of what 'pop' really means," Lewin says.
Bleeding-edge producers like Charli XCX and Grimes were a gateway, and by 2019, Magdalena Bay self-released their debut collection, mini mix vol. 1, followed soon after by a slew of one-off singles, all of which arrived accompanied by tricked-out videos. "Those early references have gotten more and more dissolved as we've come into our own sound," Tenenbaum says. "Our philosophy was just to throw things at the wall. I like to think that our music lives between genres." In 2020, Magdalena Bay debuted A Little Rhythm and a Wicked Feeling, an EP that included the song "Killshot," which went viral when anime communities on YouTube and TikTok created fancams and choreographed dances to it. When the band's growing fanbase demanded a slowed down version of the track, the duo obliged.
The EP landed them opening slots on sold-out tours with Kero Kero Bonito and Yumi Zouma, but when the COVID-19 pandemic arrived stateside, they were forced back into isolation, a state they fortunately thrive in. The pair met the moment; they upped their online presence and began streaming sets on Twitch, organically building a following while much of the world was stuck inside. "We spend all of our time together, and in some ways Mercurial World is about that particular sense of madness in containment," Lewin says. "We live together and make art together; this immerses you in our creative, insular universe."
On the title track, Tenenbaum sings directly to her bandmate against a glitzy backdrop punctuated by chiptunish blips: "You'll be around always/ Holding me down/ Living in a mercurial world." The Madonna interpolation contributes to the sense that Magdalena Bay operate on a space-time continuum that is uncanny, at once familiar and not. "Many of the lyrics express anxiety about losing time," Tenenbaum says. The high dramatics of "You Lose!" align with the penultimate, throbbing club track "Dreamcatching" as both reflect on the terrorizing realization that everyone eventually runs out of it. More specifically: "'You Lose!' is about the industry, and the anxiety that comes with trying to be a musician and maybe not quite making it," Lewin says.
Words like "anxiety" and "paranoia" come up regularly when Magdalena Bay describe their debut, but the production is beyond confident. Tracks flit between genre trappings with the ease of a band who reject the need to present any one way. "Hysterical Us" is propelled by sweeping instrumental flourishes that recall the blown-out aesthetics of a closing number in a way over-budget stadium set, while a snare snaps like a funkified house song on the bass-heavy "Secrets (Your Fire)." Their confidence overwhelms midway through "Chaeri," when Tenenbaum pleads for forgiveness while a soundscape so vast and thunderous threatens to consume her. But even as they dabble in darkness, Magdalena Bay do so without ever dragging you down into it. You can hear the band's reverence for Electric Light Orchestra in it, who they describe as "grandiose, but still cheeky."
The same descriptor can be applied to Mercurial World. On this album, Magdalena Bay offer the listener a prismatic experience, one that is built on a desire to simply believe in something beyond the finitude of our lives. It's not religion, it's not spirituality; it's this music, this moment. The album closes with "The Beginning," a discotheque ready call-back to "The End" that momentarily resolves all of Magdalena Bay's late-night philosophical questions. "Matt, go back to sleep. I think I've finally got it all figured out," Tenenbaum whispers. "Like a butterfly floating in amber, we've made this moment eternal."
~~~~~~~~
"Sporting a skittering drum bass that's beat is peppered with steel drums and tropical synths, "TELLY BAG" gives off laidback vibes, exuding the same effortless chicness that one would expect from a fashion-focused bop." - Paper Magazine
"Grab your Telfar bag and run Bayli's chic and pulse-racing pop track "Telly Bag" back." - NYLON
"Bayli's no stranger to killer beats and funky bass lines" - Billboard
"There's an effortless breeziness to "Telly Bag," specifically the way in which BAYLI's lyrics project a keen pursuit of glamor while not forgetting financial realities... its approachable and chic energy feels aligned with the utilitarian accessory that has become the go-to style choice of young queer people and people of color in the past few years." - The FADER
"[BAYLI's] music isn't bound by categories but instead sends a direct message to those who relate the most" - Hypebae
read more
Having met as teenagers in a high school music program in their hometown of Miami (Tenebaum having moved to Florida at age 1 from Buenos Aires), each quickly recognized a kismet and kindred spirit in the other, resulting in the formation of a band, the prog outfit Tabula Rasa, as well as a romance. Lewin was a self-styled guitar shredder armed with his dad's prog and concept rock records -- The Wall, The Bends, Genesis, Fiona Apple -- while Tenenbaum was a pianist and singer dipping toes in indie (Modest Mouse) and emo (My Chemical Romance) rock as well as pop made by princesses (Shakira, Britney). Both could read music and Lewin had even studied music theory, also teaching himself how to produce, record, and mix while making two Tabula Rasa records. The pair took a brief break from dating and headed to different colleges but kept the band together, often trading eight-hour bus rides from Penn to Northeastern and vice versa to rehearse, before eventually realizing two things: one, their relationship was too real to be denied, and two, no one young likes prog.
"It was like, 'No one's listening to our prog music, what a shame,'" Tenebaum says with a laugh. "We were excited to try something different. So we got into the mechanics of 'what does it mean to write a pop song?' and 'what is this craft?' and that was the beginning of Magdalena Bay."
"I remember thinking, 'Pop music is simple, so we should be able to make it,'" Lewin says. "And then, of course, there's way more to it, lots of complexities in the writing and production that I wasn't aware of. We had no artistic perspective at that point because we were still figuring out the genre and how to make something that resembled pop music before we could think about how we could make it interesting. So that was our early process."
Holding tight to that all-encompassing genre descriptor ("We make pop, but what really is pop anyway?" Tenenbaum asks, while Lewin counters, "We're a pop group making pop music; all the rest is implied...I think it's fun to imply that pop music is a wide range of things"), the duo released a grip of EPs and singles before launching its debut album Mercurial World in the fall of 2021. Many outlets, while uniformly praising its melodic hooks, sing-song vocals, and meticulously-crafted production, called it "synth-pop," which is probably the most specific subgenre Lewin and Tenenbaum will allow. Regardless, the mark had been made, and Magdalena Bay soon began to gather respect, adulation, and fans in the true currency of the day: streaming numbers, social media followers, support slots, festival appearances, and creative collabs. All the while, aided by its highly stylized online aesthetic and internet presence, the band was inching closer to realizing something of an artistic perspective after all.
"We love extending the world of our music past sound into videos or a website or graphics or whatever it might be," Tenenbaum says.
"We like to think of them as one and the same, but I think it has to start with the music," Lewin says. "We're trying to create an atmosphere or an emotional quality with it."
"It's the jumping off point that inspires the rest," Tenenbaum agrees. "But as the years have gone by, as we've made more and more videos and such, the process has become more integrated. We were having visual ideas, which was never the case before. I guess people call it 'world-building."
~~~~~~~~
Few artists are at once artful and savvy enough to transcend the endless scroll, but LA-based indie-pop duo Magdalena Bay have used social platforms to dispatch their music, and what you might call their philosophy, in hypnotic, ephemeral bursts. A long trip through their feeds produces music videos in miniature, irreverent pontifications on the state of the music industry delivered via home video VHS aesthetics, and existential meditations on everything from International Women's Day to the clone craze of the early aughts to the indefinite lifespan of plants. To Mica Tenenbaum and Matt Lewin, reality can be unmade, manipulated beyond all recognition; their project is as much musical as it is an experiment in pop persona and visual aesthetics.
Approaching reality as a construct allows Magdalena Bay to enact their own, one that is committed to nothing but expanding the possible. Even the album's sequencing hints at the eternal: the first track is titled "The End," the last is "The Beginning," forming a perfect loop when you listen to it straight through. "Matt, Matt, wake up!" Tenenbaum whispers on the introductory track. "I was thinking about how there's no true end to anything/ Everything comes from and goes to the same place: NOWHERE."
"Mercurial World has a lot of outsized themes on it, like destiny, death, and doing the impossible," Tenenbaum explains. "It's not exactly a concept album, but we love prog-rock, so we love a concept."
Tenenbaum and Lewin met over a decade ago at an after-school music program in their hometown of Miami, where they bonded over a shared love of Genesis and King Crimson, eventually starting a prog-rock band together that lasted until they moved away to college. The two reconnected after freshman year and decided to continue their teen rock project, this time in a radically new form that would come to be Magdalena Bay. "We started discovering all of this experimental pop music that pushed the boundaries of what 'pop' really means," Lewin says.
Bleeding-edge producers like Charli XCX and Grimes were a gateway, and by 2019, Magdalena Bay self-released their debut collection, mini mix vol. 1, followed soon after by a slew of one-off singles, all of which arrived accompanied by tricked-out videos. "Those early references have gotten more and more dissolved as we've come into our own sound," Tenenbaum says. "Our philosophy was just to throw things at the wall. I like to think that our music lives between genres." In 2020, Magdalena Bay debuted A Little Rhythm and a Wicked Feeling, an EP that included the song "Killshot," which went viral when anime communities on YouTube and TikTok created fancams and choreographed dances to it. When the band's growing fanbase demanded a slowed down version of the track, the duo obliged.
The EP landed them opening slots on sold-out tours with Kero Kero Bonito and Yumi Zouma, but when the COVID-19 pandemic arrived stateside, they were forced back into isolation, a state they fortunately thrive in. The pair met the moment; they upped their online presence and began streaming sets on Twitch, organically building a following while much of the world was stuck inside. "We spend all of our time together, and in some ways Mercurial World is about that particular sense of madness in containment," Lewin says. "We live together and make art together; this immerses you in our creative, insular universe."
On the title track, Tenenbaum sings directly to her bandmate against a glitzy backdrop punctuated by chiptunish blips: "You'll be around always/ Holding me down/ Living in a mercurial world." The Madonna interpolation contributes to the sense that Magdalena Bay operate on a space-time continuum that is uncanny, at once familiar and not. "Many of the lyrics express anxiety about losing time," Tenenbaum says. The high dramatics of "You Lose!" align with the penultimate, throbbing club track "Dreamcatching" as both reflect on the terrorizing realization that everyone eventually runs out of it. More specifically: "'You Lose!' is about the industry, and the anxiety that comes with trying to be a musician and maybe not quite making it," Lewin says.
Words like "anxiety" and "paranoia" come up regularly when Magdalena Bay describe their debut, but the production is beyond confident. Tracks flit between genre trappings with the ease of a band who reject the need to present any one way. "Hysterical Us" is propelled by sweeping instrumental flourishes that recall the blown-out aesthetics of a closing number in a way over-budget stadium set, while a snare snaps like a funkified house song on the bass-heavy "Secrets (Your Fire)." Their confidence overwhelms midway through "Chaeri," when Tenenbaum pleads for forgiveness while a soundscape so vast and thunderous threatens to consume her. But even as they dabble in darkness, Magdalena Bay do so without ever dragging you down into it. You can hear the band's reverence for Electric Light Orchestra in it, who they describe as "grandiose, but still cheeky."
The same descriptor can be applied to Mercurial World. On this album, Magdalena Bay offer the listener a prismatic experience, one that is built on a desire to simply believe in something beyond the finitude of our lives. It's not religion, it's not spirituality; it's this music, this moment. The album closes with "The Beginning," a discotheque ready call-back to "The End" that momentarily resolves all of Magdalena Bay's late-night philosophical questions. "Matt, go back to sleep. I think I've finally got it all figured out," Tenenbaum whispers. "Like a butterfly floating in amber, we've made this moment eternal."
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"Sporting a skittering drum bass that's beat is peppered with steel drums and tropical synths, "TELLY BAG" gives off laidback vibes, exuding the same effortless chicness that one would expect from a fashion-focused bop." - Paper Magazine
"Grab your Telfar bag and run Bayli's chic and pulse-racing pop track "Telly Bag" back." - NYLON
"Bayli's no stranger to killer beats and funky bass lines" - Billboard
"There's an effortless breeziness to "Telly Bag," specifically the way in which BAYLI's lyrics project a keen pursuit of glamor while not forgetting financial realities... its approachable and chic energy feels aligned with the utilitarian accessory that has become the go-to style choice of young queer people and people of color in the past few years." - The FADER
"[BAYLI's] music isn't bound by categories but instead sends a direct message to those who relate the most" - Hypebae
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