Last Friday, emerging pop duo Magdalena Bay played at House of Blues Cleveland as part of their “Imaginal Mystery Tour.” Their 2024 release, Imaginal Disk, was met with critical acclaim, making their tour one of my most anticipated concerts of the year.
A fundamental part of the show was its off-kilter visuals. In addition to the ever-changing lights and almost overwhelming use of a fog machine, there were two screens on either side of the stage, one just a rectangle and one shaped like a mirror with angel wings. Throughout the show, they displayed images with the same eerie, low-res vibe as the animations that play on bowling alley screens. At their weirdest, the screens alternated between videos of Laura Dern and closeups of tongues. The uncanniness of checkerboards, poorly-drawn celestial objects with creepy faces, human–monster hybrids, and fields of goats resembled the feeling of being a kid in the late 2000s.
Magdalena Bay opened with “She Looks Like Me!” with Mica Tenenbaum, the group’s singer, wearing a flowy blue getup and blue makeup to mimic the CD pulled from her forehead on Imaginal Disk’s album cover. Matthew Lewin, the band’s producer and guitarist, wore an orange jumpsuit, a stark contrast to Tenenbaum. The costumes were a highlight throughout, with Tenenbaum going through two different costume changes. Halfway through the set, during the song “Chaeri,” Tenenbaum reemerged wearing an orange version of her previous outfit down to the laces of her Tabis. She also donned a beautifully crafted cape resembling flames, which framed her head like a halo. Finally, during “Cry for Me,” she came out wearing an ethereal sheer white dress with angel wings. I could see how much fun she was having dancing in it. The progression of costumes represented the concert’s rising intensity toward the middle of the set with hard-hitting songs like “Chaeri” and “That’s My Floor,” before the calmer “Angel on a Satellite” and “The Ballad of Matt & Mica.”
Tenenbaum looked absolutely beautiful throughout, and her stage presence was captivating as she yelled out call and responses to the audience in her twinkling voice, and made use of the entire stage jumping and dancing nonstop. Two highlights were the performances of “Fear, Sex” and “Watching T.V.” During the climaxes of those two songs, Lewin and Tenenbaum put on masks resembling the monsters that appeared in their music videos — the album itself is loaded with visual imagery of monsters right out of a warped children’s book. Lewin’s guitar solos were also captivating, though infrequent and short. I wish he had more of a spotlight, as every time he was the center of attention the energy was maximized.
What made the concert was, of course, the music. With an upbeat and experimental approach to pop, Magdalena Bay is perfect for live performance. The songs would have been enough to rile the crowd even without all the extra gimmicks. They were able to keep their energy through most of their set, with songs like “Killing Time” and “Secrets (Your Fire)” toward the start, and “The Beginning” played during the encore. Unfortunately, they grouped their slower and less popular songs in the middle, creating a noticeable lull. After Tenenbaum’s monster dance at the end of “Watching T.V.,” the following five songs were noticeably slower, blending together and not garnering the same audience reaction.
I also could easily notice a difference between the duo’s excitement to perform their newer songs versus those they were clearly bored of. One of my favorite songs in their entire catalog, “Secrets (Your Fire),” was missing Tenenbaum’s sultry voice, and “Chaeri” sounded rushed. Those two are some of their most successful songs on their most popular album Mercurial World, so I’m not surprised that they may be getting bored of them. Hearing “Killshot” live made me appreciate how much their music has grown over the years, but I was disappointed that they transitioned to the “slowed version” popularized by TikTok. Luckily, not all of their earlier music felt as tired, as other older songs like “You Lose!” and “The Beginning” were just as enthusiastic as those from Imaginal Disk.
It was an absolute delight to see Magdalena Bay. It was very apparent how much love and care they pour into their music and their live shows. Tenenbaum’s stellar vocals coupled with Lewin’s guitar made for an amazing performance, which sounded even better than the studio version. The duo’s commitment to making it about the experience as a whole made me see the album in a whole new light — not just as a body of music, but a whole world of monsters, flowers, and keytars.
