Magdalena Bay might be the best 80’s
male and female duo ever to form in the twenty-first
century. More experimental than the Eurythmics and
less rock oriented than Roxette, while Everything But
The Girl maybe comes closest with their
flirtation with jazz, Magdalena Bay brings
together the other-worldly lead vocal from Mica
Tenenbaum and the prog-leaning, synthesizer-heavy,
and polyrhythmic multi-instrumentalism of
Matthew Lewin to make a heady, challenging,
beautifully performed and produced collection
of danceable, moody, lyrically clever, sonically
immersive, experimental art pop. Around the
same time I came across their video of a cover
of David Bowie’s “Ashes to Ashes,” my son, whose
broad musical tastes continue to amaze me,
turned me on to Imaginal Disk, a great album
without a single skipper. I was an instant fan.
My second foray into their discography was
the double record compilation of a three-volume
E.P. released under the title Mini-Mix, Vol. 1-3,
recordings ranging from 2019 to 2023.
I’ve heard this term “mixtape”
used in music circles over the last few years and
was frankly confused by it. I googled that. I learned
that the contemporary definition of the word
“mixtape” refers to a non-album release featuring
looser, more experimental, creatively divergent
music that is often distributed through alternative
channels and/or given free to fans. Listening to
these three volumes of mini-mixtapes from
Magdalena Bay, I’m not sure that this music is
significantly divergent from their other material.
While it’s still pretty engaging, I don’t find it
nearly as strong as the recordings on Imaginal Disk.
More accurately, this is a collection of bonus
material that over the last few years, didn’t make
it on either of their two first albums, so my
advice would be to start with the official studio
records, and if you want more after that,
you could do much worse than these Mini-Mix
extended play albums. But if you want the
introduction that grabbed me at the very first,
check out their Bowie cover on Like A Version.
Notes on the vinyl editions:
- Imaginal Disk, Mom and Pop Records, 2024, light translucent blue double vinyl
- Mini-Mix Volumes 1-3, Fat Possum Records, 2025, purple swirl double vinyl, audio on three sides.
In case you don’t already know: I’m listening to almost everything in my vinyl collection, A to Z, and writing at least one, sometimes two or three long skinny poem-like-things in response for each artist, and on a few occasions, writing a long skinny poem-like-thing in response to more than one artist. As a poet and a student of poetry, I understand that these things look like poems, but they don’t really sound much like poetry, hence, I call them “poem-like-things.” I’ll admit that they’re just long, skinny essays that veer every now and then into the poetic or lyric.
michael jarmer 