Earlier this week, Magana released her latest album Teeth on Audio Antihero and Colored Pencils. A record, we described when writing about single ‘To My Love‘, which offers “a strange sound for a strange world, made by an artist determined to use every style available to best communicate their own experience of trying to exist within it.” Fresh from the success of similar features celebrating Frog’s back catalogue late last year, we’ve invited Audio Antihero’s own Jamie Halliday back to give us the rundown on their working relationship with Jeni Magaña and share some of the tracks which have proved meaningful over the years.
Audio Antihero Records began working with Jeni Magaña back in 2016, having made our initial connection through Submithub (if you can believe that). I was still fairly new in the United States at the time, and working on Golden Tongue, her debut EP, was a pretty nice way to continue getting grounded in a new continent.
Now in 2024, I’m working on another Magana release, and again facing new personal challenges and yet another exhausting relocation. Jeni’s music and the friendship it gave me mean a lot to me, especially in times like this, so it has been kind of comforting to put thoughts and memories together for this feature.
If you’ve heard her music before, are only familiar with her from her work with folk like Mitski and Lady Lamb, or if she’s totally new to you, I hope this will help to offer an okay introduction/recap to her previous solo work, as well as her journey to the spellbinding new Teeth LP.
Get It Right
“…If you could see what is in my mind / You would change before my eyes…”
It seems “right” to start at the beginning. ‘Get It Right’ was her debut single, released ahead of the EP we did together. It was really exciting at the time to see it getting snapped up for coverage by sites like Collapse Board, Gold Flake Paint, For The Rabbits, and The Grey Estates. When you begin working with a new artist, there’s always some anxiety about proving that you aren’t another timewaster, so it’s always really gratifying when you can feel like your contribution is making a difference.
As music press continues to erode for hobbyists and professionals alike, it’s getting harder and harder to find that sense of validation and momentum. We seem to be asking fewer and fewer people for more and more support. I send my endless appreciation to anyone who is still out there doing this stuff, and zero thanks to that traitor at HI54 Blog.
Looking back, I think there might be better songs on the EP, but this felt like such a perfect controlled burst with which to introduce her. It was sorta wild to finally work with someone who knew how to sing, like, holy cow.
Inches Apart
“…Oceans won’t take you…”
Originally released as a part of the Golden Tongue EP, ‘Inches Apart’ would later be re-issued with remixes from Frog and Benjamin Shaw (premiered right here) as a means of promoting the music video that Lauren Finerman directed. My personal favourite, this has gone on to become her best-known song at this point.
Certainly, it didn’t happen all at once or all in one place, but 25k streams here, 15k streams there, a few BBC plays, plus features on The Line of Best Fit, For Folk’s Sake, London in Stereo, it all began to add up. The song aches from beginning to end and I hope you love it too.
Pages
“…Our best friends and enemies are starting to look all the same…”
‘Pages’ was an older, kind of abandoned song that I convinced a sceptical Jeni to let me release as a “tour single” to help promote her shows, and also to keep her music visible online after the EP. It kinda worked too, a few blogs picked it up and we got some BBC airplay for it.
I like the song a lot. It’s got a more traditional “indie rock” sound than much of her other material, which I feel is what a “tour single” should be. Something fun and loud that works out of context and maybe wouldn’t have fit on the record.
A while later, she gave me a cute printed download code she’d made for the single, which prompted Jonathan Smith, her drummer and boyfriend (now drummer and husband), to say “Don’t download that.” I responded that I’d been the one to release the single, and he answered: “I know.” Good talk Jon.
Face in a Locket
“…Just tell your friends you’re leaving soon…”
Although we did a couple of stopgap releases after Golden Tongue, we didn’t necessarily bank on how long that gap was going to be. By the time her debut album, You Are Not A Morning Person was finally ready, I was wiped out and the label was dead (or at least buried alive).
I don’t know if I’ve ever witnessed an album’s development more than I did this one through rough mixes and live performances. It was kind of painful to not release it at the time (musically I’m a jealous ex) but it was also kind of a landmark moment, like, “Oh fuck, I’m finally out.” After years and years of dragging myself through it, I wasn’t “just doing one more album.” I was done! (Narrator: “They weren’t”).
There are lots of great songs on here but ‘Face in a Locket’ is just so my shit. It rumbles with a subtle tension until it all finally pours out. Then it’s over and we’re grooving with ‘Jenny Don’t Leave’. It’s a lovely record.
Though she self-released it originally, it was later picked up for an expanded cassette reissue by Beanie Tapes, which came out absolutely beautiful. I enjoyed seeing her reflect on the album recently.
Fringe
“…I won’t cut my hair for you…”
pen pin are a pop duo compromised of Jeni and Emily Moore. They’ve had four singles so far, and I’m pretty excited about their upcoming album. I listen to the singles on a loop sometimes but ‘Fringe’ is especially irresistible, and the video is a lot of fun too.
I feel like these two are practically musical soulmates, you can hear the chemistry, trust, and closeness in their music. Not a lot of music makes me happy, at least not in the conventional sense, but ‘Fringe’ is an absolute joy.
Oceans
“…Pretty young girls, oceans of sound / It’s so annoying when you’re not around…”
‘Oceans’ was originally written by CHUCK. There’s a version of it on the My Band Is a Computer compilation and then a more loaded electric version on his Frankenstein Songs for the Grocery Store album.
The distant seed of this idea was planted, I suppose, when Bateman from Frog mentioned offhand that he thought CHUCK could be huge if he wrote songs for people with less polarising voices. A while later, in 2017, I was trying to think of ways to promote CHUCK’s final album and kinda knew we’d have to try going door-to-door with it to get ears on it. We did a lot of interviews and premieres and remixes and b-sides and music videos and so on just to try to reach a few new people.
Asking Jeni if she’d be open to covering ‘Oceans’ (I also suggested the creepier ‘Happy Birthday‘, which is my favourite) was another part of this album campaign. She did such a beautiful job and made it totally her own. The song got some nice reviews and was played on national radio in Austria (shout out to Robert Rotifer at FM4) so I think it did its job.
Unfortunately, I don’t think CHUCK’s songs ever really got their due, but I’m proud of the energy and ideas we put into the album. I’m grateful too that labelmates like Magana and Benjamin Shaw (who remixed ‘Happy Birthday’) were willing to help participate in the campaign and wanted to give CHUCK a nice send-off for his final album.
Taste Bad
“…Feel good…Honest…Light heart…Savage…”
Speaking of nice send-offs, Magana also contributed a gorgeous cover of Cloud’s ‘Tastes Bad’ to The Desperation Club – A Cloud Tribute Compilation. This was something we put together in 2018 after his final album, Plays with Fire.
Cloud is Tyler Taormina (who now directs Michael Cera in movies) and he’s such an angel that it’s easy to forget that not everyone is already his friend. When Magana and 33 other artists came together to cover his songs for this compilation, it really did feel like everyone was in fact his good pal.
I’d say Teeth is my first “proper” release with Magana since 2016 but these compilations, covers and remixes were a nice way to keep working with her while we both saw our priorities and capacities shift.
I don’t want to say it’s a rare thing to actively enjoy collaborating with someone and to earnestly want to work with them, but it’s certainly a nice thing when it happens. It doesn’t even need to be about chemistry or similarities in personality, it may not even need to be about music, but trust and good faith can go so far when you find them with someone.
I Was Gonna Go to Boston
“…And only two of us survived…”
Out of context, I’d like to imagine this title is a reference to her recording with Dropkick Murphys in 2007. That would please me. But ‘I Was Gonna Go to Boston’ is instead taken from her To Sleep, To Dream experiment. Here she narrated her own dreams and then set them to music. There are a lot of spiders in that sleepy brain of hers but it’s really neat.
Magana’s music allows her to share things about herself that she might withhold in her day-to-day life. We met through music but developed a friendship in the years that followed, and I love that I can still learn about her through her work, especially as we only managed to live in the same city for a short time.
This strange record is special to me since just like her music allows for suppressed elements of her personality to surface, her dreams naturally push her suppressed memories, ideals, goals, and feelings out into these bizarre narratives. The result of pairing her less-considered words and themes with music allows for one of her releases to document another side of her, one which I truly adore, that part of her which is a total fucking goof.
Magana’s second album, ‘Teeth,’ is out now via Audio Antihero and Colored Pencils. I think it’s her best yet, and I hope you’ll see its specialness too.