May 7 / 2025 –

I am lazy in a very selective way. Sometimes a show is playing just a short fifteen-minute walk from my apartment, and I don’t go. But other times, I drop everything and drive three to four hours for a show two cities away. There’s almost never any rhyme or reason to the way I operate. It’s a source of great stress and complication in my life, and it extends beyond the simple issue of whether or not I want to see a band play music that I like. It would be an issue for my therapist, if I hadn’t stopped going.

Anyway, in January, I learned that Magdalena Bay would be stopping in my city along their Imaginal Mystery tour. Between the release of their last album (which landed at #3 on our Top 50 Albums of 2024 list) and their tour announcement, I had reached out to seek an interview. While the band was understandably unavailable for one, I was offered a press pass to the show. I was downright gleeful. Jubilant, even. I marked it down on my calendar.

About three weeks before the show, I followed up. The email came back “undelivered.” Evidently, the individual who’d promised me that pass was no longer with the team. Sweating and crying and screaming, I scrambled to connect with the PR team and see about my pass. They got back to me and said they too would circle back closer to the show. I felt safe, and I let myself get excited again.

Then, less than 24 hours before the doors would open on the Magdalena Bay show, I was informed that they wouldn’t be able to get me the press pass after all. I returned to sweating and crying and screaming. Then it occurred to me that I would’ve just purchased a ticket regardless. In fact, it had never crossed my mind that a press pass would be possible. After I got over my little fit, I purchased a ticket like any other normal individual would.

In the lead-up, I ran through my usual internal power struggle to leave the house. I often stand by the door with my keys in hand and actually physically reach for the doorknob and hesitate for several minutes. I began buying tickets without the insurance so that I couldn’t get the money back. It’s my way of forcing myself into these things. Ultimately, I did leave the house and head for the show. When I drove by the venue and saw the line, my jaw dropped like an animated cat who sees something shocking. It goes against everything I believe in to wait in a line of that length. I didn’t stop driving. I drove until I reached Lake Erie, about five minutes beyond the venue itself. I wandered out along the Outer Harbor and found some secluded boulders on the beach, where I hid myself away from the wind with the only book I could find in my car: a play.

When I’d finally killed enough time to feel ready, I made the journey back to my car, then to a parking spot across the river from the venue, and finally inside.

All of this agonizing and bargaining and frustration is to demonstrate that I am a fool. Had I known the show that I was in for, I would have been first in line to see it.

If you asked me before last night what the best show I’d ever been to in my life was, I would have to think for quite a while. I’d likely bring up my photos on my phone and see which ones I’d been to in the last handful of years. And even then, I don’t know if I’d come back with a definitive answer. If you asked me this morning, the answer was clear: Magdalena Bay.

Before Imaginal Disk came out, I was more of a casual fan of the synth pop duo. But their second studio album, for my money, is the best pop album I’ve heard this decade. Mica Tenenbaum and Matt Lewin are generational talents, having written and produced the entirety of the project themselves. The album is excellent and ambitious, but oftentimes projects of that scope are difficult to translate to the stage.

Matt and Mica had no difficulty doing that. In fact, the live performance felt as natural and as well crafted as the studio album itself. The duo are born performers, and Mica truly shines as the frontwoman. They embrace the medium of the live show in full, with bright screens that are timed perfectly to the performances, costume changes, and musical interludes that follow the story structure of Imaginal Disk. Mica commits fully to the stage persona, and the audience has no choice but to buy in.

Being the Imaginal Mystery tour, the band plays the entirety of the Imaginal Disk album, which is part of why the show feels like it follows a true narrative. Their other hits are placed among the setlist in ways that feel natural. The show builds to the final track off the album, “The Ballad of Matt & Mica.” It was my favorite song from the album, and it’s the perfect finish to the show. The bass-heavy synth line that arrives before the first chorus hits like a train. And this song, which I never would have considered highly emotional before, brought a tear to my eye as the show neared its end.

Nobody is doing their live shows the way Magdalena Bay is doing them. The performances sound phenomenal, the atmosphere is perfectly crafted, and I have not been to a show—perhaps ever—that hooked me like this one. The band has come such a long way in a very short time, and I will not miss the opportunity to see them live in the future. If you have the chance to see them, I highly recommend you take it.