Charli Rocks Demeulemeester

In the arts, historically, there are many styles of duo. Recently, I spoke with Rico Nasty about her latest album, a collaboration with Kenneth Blume (Kenny Beats). Asked about their communication style and why it works, she scoffed — according to Rico, their success is not in spite of, but rather because of, the sheer amount of disagreement and push and pull between their dichotomous ideas. But with Tenenbaum and Lewin, common ground has been fruitful, and easier to find. “For the most part, we have the same opinions creatively on everything. It's very rare where I’ll feel very strongly about something, and she won't like it or the other way around. That's rare. But it happens, and then usually we'll be like, ‘Okay, you're right.’ Because sometimes you get caught up in something and you get tunnel vision on a specific idea you're working on, and then you need someone else's perspective to be like, ‘It's not actually working.’"

They’ve perfected the recipe between themselves, and the proof lies in their discography, a tight and eclectic catalog. But this year, its limits were tested. Their proverbial kitchen expanded to include more cooks, sous chefs, and the like when Magdalena Bay embarked on their first film. It was a challenge in finding a new sort of balance. Tenenbaum explains, “The way we write and make our music, it's kind of like whatever we think of we can do. There [are] no limits. There's no limit. When you're making any video, any music video, especially when [it's] so long and potentially expensive, there are so many limitations that you're up against that it's like you could address creatively and whatever. It all works out. But it is more of a logistical-meets-creative, collaborative kind of thing.

Lewin continues, “[With music], we work with our friends doing drums, Nick on mixing, but the vast majority of the time spent is just us two making the music. With the film, it involves so many other people. There's a lot more, I guess, creative discussion for the people you work with. It's more collaborative…  it also forces you to, I mean, not necessarily compromise, but change the thing you have in your head. Where I feel like with music, it's much more like I have this thing in my head and I could get it onto the recording, and you're not limited. Especially now with modern music technologies, you could do anything with a laptop. There are very few things that you can't produce musically without your laptop, but mostly you can just get the thing in your head out onto the computer. But I feel like with film, it's just. Yeah. It's so much more logistically complicated and expensive. Yeah. So it does force you to change this thing you see in your head so clearly into something that resembles it, but is not quite that. So it could be frustrating. I feel like the endless possibilities of modern music production, I mean, a lot of people will say it's a bad thing, but I think it's just like, I like it. It's the way we've learned how to make music, and it's what we know. So I think going from something where you really have endless possibilities to something more constricted is."

Tenenbaum jumps in, with an addendum. “It becomes a new thing.”

Limitations, for the duo, had been a help and hindrance in the past. Starting out, with little budget, they’d always found a way to make their own music videos— which both constricted and pushed them creatively. “It forced us to come up with unique ways of editing or performance. Those limitations force you into being creative with how you try to get an idea across. So I think it is a good idea. I don't know why I don't feel the same about the music itself.”

Both on a musical plane and visually, with limitations or not, they’ve always eschewed boundaries. Having initially bonded as teens over fantasy worlds and outlandish characters they both loved — Harry Potter, The Book Thief, the TV show House — soon Lewin’s musical palate began to infiltrate Tenenbaum’s taste, and by way of bands like Genesis and Yes, she adopted an affinity for prog rock and its off-kilter time signatures. From there, in unison, their palate expanded. Pop entered the picture. 

“We definitely discovered PC music around age 16. Coming from an anti-pop background, that sort of ironic take on it was the gateway for us,” Lewin explains. Magdalena Bay, however, outgrew the cloak of irony almost immediately. Once in the door, the only feeling they had for the pop landscape was reverence. Tenenbaum explains, “We were like, this is actually amazing stuff. In fact, I've always taken it too seriously. We've always been very earnest — maybe sometimes to a fault with it.” Lewin nods, “We don't have that punk ethos.”

Contrary to their self-identification, there’s quite a bit about Magdalena Bay that is punk in approach. Fiercely DIY, the film originated from an offhand urge the duo had to make a music video for every single song on their album, Mercurial World with little to no budget. Timing didn’t align. Then, while in the studio working on the following and most recent LP, Imaginal Disc, it came up again. “We had the idea for the title and the cover really early on.” This was the kicker, creatively. Tenenbaum unpacks the process as it unfolded in real time, "We wrote the story while writing music. Maybe halfway through the music creation process, we started talking about what it might look like to do a movie for it, and superimpose a narrative and characters over the lyrics.”

Like a ball bouncing through a sunburnt festival crowd, the two finish each others’ sentences with an eagerness that mounts as we get further into the details of their craft. Lewin continues, “As we were finishing writing we started thinking about characters and plot. We weren't changing lyrics per se to fit the plot, but we were thinking more just on the emotional progression of the album, and how to correlate it with the story and the characters’ journey… It’s a semi-concept album — where the album can be enjoyed without knowing anything about the character and the plot, and the lyrics don't directly correlate to the story. But I think emotionally, the album mirrors the story. You can then interpret the lyrics to fit the story, or you cannot. The story is sort of just one way to interpret the album.”

Magdalena Bay is the Choose Your Own Adventure book of alt-pop. Rooted in a real appreciation for rock, they are a shimmering, shoegaze-steeped synthpop version of Coheed and Cambria — made for and by fantasy lovers, avid readers, LARPing fans, as much as those who purely want to get lost in a dreamy wash of good music. The key, for listeners and the artists themselves, is to leave it all wide open. “A beautiful thing about music,” Lewin says, “is that it's up to the listener's interpretation of what it means to them, and it has a personal thing. That's why we like to frame the album movie as just one version of what the album means. This is just one way that we're seeing it. Even to us, it's just one version of the lyrics because I think the lyrics are very personal to me as an individual person, not the character we've created.”

And they’ll continue to offer more and more iterations of their work. While they’re constantly ideating on new music, it doesn’t end there. With the album and film out, and a whole tour cycle behind them based around Imaginal Disc and its visual identity — including their memorable red and blue costumes and set choreography, motifs from both the film and live show — there’s still more to come from it. Next week, Magdalena Bay will hit the road with Paramore’s Hayley Williams on her highly anticipated solo tour, The Hayley Williams Show, alongside Rico Nasty as support. As far as their production plan? Unclear if they hoped to keep things a mystery, or if they were just as curious as I. As an opening act, there are limitations. “It’ll be a different perspective of thinking of them as songs, rather than as part of the story,” Tenenbaum thinks out loud. But, as has been proven by these two, limitations mean little when it comes to what they can, and will, create. After a pause, she smirks, giving me the last hint. “We don't like doing the same thing twice.”