The Magic City develop a power-pop and punk science on ‘A Series of Chemicals’
Boston modern rock band turns up the tempo and sonic diversity on a punchy new single out Friday, February 23
The Magic City perform live at The Cantab in Cambridge on March 1
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Photo Credit: Ken Marcou
BOSTON, Mass. [February 23, 2024] -- When The Magic City arrived on the scene late last year, part of the modern rock band’s grand introduction revolved around its moniker, taken from an imagined fictional metropolis that exists mentally as a combination of their home of Boston and spiritual base of London. But any great city’s reputation is built upon its various neighborhoods, with their own distinct style and rhythm, and the songs of The Magic City reside in similar fashion. On Friday, February 23, the quartet takes us to another part of town with new single “A Series of Chemicals,” arriving exactly a week before they perform live at The Cantab in Cambridge on March 1.
Where last fall’s provocative debut single “Roadrunner Vs. Your Mother” leaned in on British Invasion inspiration and a poignant dose of Cool Britannia set to seduce and stir, “A Series of Chemicals” brings it back home, drawing on several generations of American punk and power-pop. And like fellow Boston heroes The Cars, The Magic City now reveals itself as a band with more than one frontman, allowing bassist and producer Mike Quinn – who wrote the first demo of the song before bringing it to the band – to take the mic and drive home the vocal charge.
“We have been working to develop an exciting and diverse catalog of songs that we hope will inspire repeated listens,” says Quinn. “We want to be your favorite band.”
With a heartfelt flair and power-pop punch, “A Series of Chemicals” not only expands the sonic palette of The Magic City, but also its rich storylines and gravitational world-building. The band first formed in early 2022, just as the pandemic haze began to lift, with Quinn rounded out by a trio of longtime collaborators in guitarist Adam Anderson, guitarist and vocalist David Jackel, and drummer Ken Marcou. But where “Roadrunner Vs. Your Mother” zeroed in on the human element of relationships, family, and getting older; this new single delves deeper into our shared chemistry – and how it shapes our behavior with others.
“I am not a scientist, but I am fascinated by science,” Quinn says. “The disciplines of chemistry and biology, and how they differ and overlap with each other is interesting to me. This song explores the idea that we make our decisions not because of free will, but in the various biological and chemical reactions going on in our brains and bodies… the billions of bacteria in concert with and/or at odds with the hormones we produce and the drugs we ingest. Is it our fault when we make bad decisions? Or is it due to bacterial behavior in our gut or an imbalance of chemicals in our heads? The protagonist in this song blames the chemicals while also praising them.”
Quinn admits that The Magic City were keen on following up on the debut single with something more up-tempo, and “A Series of Chemicals,” already a live show favorite, fit the bill with its musical DNA linked to a lineage of MC5, Television, Matthew Sweet, and the Pixies. It came together quickly in the studio – “just under 24 hours,” Quinn notes – after the band workshopped his early demo. It was engineered and mixed by Quinn, and recorded at his Bluetone Studio in Somerville as well as Shave Media in Allston. Additional engineering was completed by Jackel and David Grabowski.
“I couldn’t get the song out of my head, which I thought made it a good candidate for a single,” Jackel adds. “When Mike first showed us this song in practice, it was a ‘Marvin Berry’s band keeping up with Marty McFly’ situation, in that we followed Mike’s lead and it all clicked. I came up with guitar parts that I knew I would enjoy playing live: dirty chords on the choruses, and reggae-style backbeat hits on the verses.”
Offering up a change-of-pace in a band’s second single feels right at home for The Magic City, who first assembled over a shared love of Britpop, post-punk, classic alternative, glam, goth, UK indie and the other sounds that raised us. With this new project, the quartet has taken pieces of its past and/or other affiliated projects – The Daily Pravda, Reverse, The Daylilies, Graveyard of the Atlantic, and others – and crafted something that feels fresh and new without ever losing sight of how we got here in the first place. Part of that is never allowing the listener to get too comfortable; The Magic City is already a band that defies expectation.
“We definitely intended this band to have multiple songwriters,” Quinn notes. “And up to this point the primary songwriter has ended up singing lead. But I wouldn’t hesitate to write a song for one of the other guys to sing lead on.”
Jackel agrees with the sentiment, and while he’s known to Boston audiences mostly as a frontman in the aforementioned Daily Pravda, he’s enjoying this new creative arrangement. “That’s part of the joy of this band for me,” he says. “I love that we can write songs with different lead singers, duets, and three-part harmonies. Having multiple songwriters and vocalists adds more depth to each song and new dimensions to our body of work, and it gives me a chance to catch my breath during live shows. My fantasy is that our dynamic becomes a functional version of what the Beatles were doing in the late ‘60s.”
One new neighborhood at a time.
Media Contact: Please direct all press inquiries to Michael Marotta at michael@knyvet.com, and reach The Magic City directly at info@themagiccityofficial.com.
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The Magic City on ‘A Series of Chemicals’:
Adam Anderson: Lead and rhythm guitars
David Jackel: Rhythm guitar and backing vocals
Ken Marcou: Drums
Mike Quinn: Lead vocal, bass guitar, keyboards
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‘A Series of Chemicals’ production credits:
Recorded at Bluetone Studio in Somerville, MA and Shave Media in Allston, MA
Engineered by Mike Quinn
Additional engineering by David Jackel and David Grabowski
Mixed by Mike Quinn
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‘A Series of Chemicals’ single artwork:
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The Magic City short bio:
The Magic City is escapism in music. The Boston-based modern rock band takes its moniker from an imagined convergence of Boston and London, and its sound echoes the spirit, style, and vitality of both cities. Debut single “Roadrunner Vs. Your Mother” arrived in November 2023, followed by “A Series of Chemicals” – both serve as a tone-setter and seductive invitation to what’s to come in 2024. As the great Hunter S. Thompson once wrote, “Buy the ticket, take the ride.”
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Media praise for The Magic City:
The music of The Magic City can be found and heard on Banks Radio Australia, Boston Emissions, BumbleBee Radio, Christian’s Cosmic Corner on Mark Skin Radio, Click Roll Boom, CTRL+Space, If It’s Too Loud, Laura Beth’s Mixtape Show on Reclaimed Radio, Marc’s Alt-Rock Playground on Mark Skin Radio, Rising with Skybar on WMFO, Rock And Roll Fables, The Bad Copy, The Retweeter's Show on ZenoFM , The Whole Kameese, UncertainFM, WoNoBlog, Your First Listen (Eardrum Buzz, Ken’s FM), and other fine stations, shows, and platforms…
“More aiming for pop than rock, the band touches on early ‘70s Bowie and pop from the U.K. from the ‘60s as well as the ‘90s. With a clean sound, The Magic City sets itself apart from almost all other bands I have gotten to know in the past years from Boston. … I dare you to be patient. The Magic City does deliver. The band slowly but surely builds [‘Roadrunner Vs. Your Mother’] up, without a million decibels or instruments added. The song simply gets a body, while sticking to that sweet angle it has as well. Just a little emphasis in the singing and a good guitar solo do it all. ‘Come get it’ the band sings and that is exactly my advice to you: go and get it!” _WoNoBlog
“[On ‘Roadrunner Vs. Your Mother’] The Magic City hints at their anthemic qualities early on with the slick build up to a lush chorus that’s utterly mesmerizing as Jackel adopts an almost sunny disposition in contrast to The Daily Pravda’s more subdued approach. TDP bandmate Adam Anderson similarly shines on lead guitar with some serious soloing that should excite fans on what’s to come while Mike Quinn on bass and synths and drummer Ken Marcou deliver some debonair rhythm section synchronicity for their first outing together.” _Rock And Roll Fables
“‘Roadrunner Vs. Your Mother’ has this hypnotic, mysterious feel to it that you just can’t escape. The Magic City definitely has our attention and we have a feeling many more will soon feel the same.” _The Whole Kameese
“Despite being from Boston, The Magic City don’t sound like a Boston band at all. The band’s debut single, ‘Roadrunner Vs. Your Mother’, has more of a British sound than American. You’re going to hear the early Britpop of Suede and Pulp mixed with the glam of David Bowie and T-Rex. As you can imagine, ‘Roadrunner Vs. Your Mother’ doesn’t sound like anything else from 2023. Everything about the song screams early 90's, back before Britpop had truly taken over the airwaves. The most modern thing about the sound is the slick production. The Magic City have a winner on their hands with this one, and we’re looking forward to whatever they do next.” _If It’s Too Loud
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The Magic City bio:
For those with a life soundtracked by music, there are specific formative moments that help shape the years that follow. Growing up, it’s often the records a family member provides for us at a young age that creates a startling, yet exciting, gateway into an enchanting aural world. As a teenager, it’s the records that we seek out independently, the ones that speak to us in ways nothing else possibly could. And as adults, we return to the records that rekindle that spark we often feel we lost along the way, the ones that transport us back to those early years, now listened to with a stronger sense of self and seasoned experience.
That last moment is rooted in escapism, the insatiable desire to be somewhere else entirely, free from the shackles of the present day and all – the good, the bad, and the very bad – that comes with it. For The Magic City, the new Boston modern rock band featuring members of The Daily Pravda, Reverse, The Daylilies, and Graveyard of the Atlantic, escapism is the means and the end..
Sometime in the past year (maybe longer ago, or perhaps more recently), with the dense air of the global pandemic weighing down any real sense of permanence and society’s lingering apprehension sparking the desire to start something anew, Adam Anderson (lead guitar, vocals), David Jackel (rhythm guitar, vocals, synth); Mike Quinn (bass guitar, vocals, synth); and Ken Marcou (drums, drum programming, percussion) came together to form The Magic City. Quinn was no stranger to the other three’s more known band, The Daily Pravda, serving as their longtime producer and frequent collaborator and arranger.
But this was no rehash of the past, or lazy echo of prior aural seductions. Each musician shared a common vision as an exciting path forward – the punchiness and brevity of a British Invasion single; the sharpness and calculated rage of the post-punk era; the noisy end of the dial of American college rock; and the drama and intrigue of the darker side of ‘90s Britpop. It’s where 24 Hour Party People, Donnie Darko, The Lost Boys, and Black Mirror all reside in a saved digital library or dusty DVD rack of yesterday. And the sound, drawn together with kaleidoscopic fury, emits a sensation of our parents’ records from the ‘60s framed by when we first encountered them in the ‘80s and ‘90s.
The goal of The Magic City was to channel the fierce independence and curiosity of their youth, respectfully bypassing the bands that amplified that middle era for each member, and in the process, transpose two storied cities as beacons of inspiration. Because here, the quartet’s deliberate new world is a fantasy land reflecting reality in a cracked mirror, quite like the media cited above, as this fictional place is built upon what we already canvas: The companion cities of London and Boston.
The name The Magic City comes from a recurring dream a band member has had for years, in which they are trying to get from the American city to the English capital. In this dream the layouts and landmarks of the cities are completely wrong – one of the non-existent London hubs is the view from Boston’s Government Center looking down towards the harbor – but they make perfect sense within the dream. The cities are connected… sometimes linearly, sometimes interdimensionally.
In this landscape, common features overlap: Boston and Cambridge are divided by the Thames River, with lively waterfronts and plentiful pedestrian bridges. Traversing from Harvard Square to Allston involves crossing the Westminster Bridge; Big Ben and the Custom House are one and the same, and here, is taller than the Empire State Building. Like both cities’ cold and detached demeanor, the atmosphere straddles gloomy and invigorating. It is perpetually dusk; the sky and skyline are glassy shades of cold blue and gray, punctured with electric lights. Ocean salt glitters the air, and the chilly wind feels like autumn drifting into winter. Early Magic City songs like “Roadrunner Vs. Your Mother” and “I Love Lucy” retain the sentiments and scenes of both cities like a cacophonous orgy of youth, a weathered take on lofty arena ambitions, derailed only by our own sense of self.
In the dream, the protagonist often gets very close to his destination in London, only to end up detained by something mundane, like being stuck in a stalled train, or in a restaurant waiting for the bill. The anxiety is reminiscent of Little Nemo trying each night to find his way to the palace in Slumberland, and always waking up just before he arrives. This city, built from reorganized pieces of real cities, also recalls its namesake, the book The Magic City, which features a sprawling model city come to life, built from found objects like books, toys, and kitchenware.
But here, found objects are a lifetime of collected albums and singles, reconstructed into new forms that reflect the wonder we all felt when hearing the music for the first time: like our parents serving up The Beatles in grade school, or the mad dash in college to learn everything about a new favorite band, allowing it to transform you into the person you always knew existed somewhere under the layers.
In December 2022, The Magic City demoed six songs at Bluetone Studio in Somerville, and soon those efforts will see the light of day. The story begins, in sound and vision, with the aforementioned debut single “Roadrunner Vs. Your Mother,” set for release in November 2023, with additional music to follow in 2024.
The drive that permeates and motivates The Magic City songs is the same sense of urgent longing for an elusive destination that lies just on the edge of consciousness, and always fades whenever we get too close. Like a memory that once felt so real, relegated now to the back alleys of what we hold closest to our reality. Welcome to The Magic City. You’ve been there before; but not like this.
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Press Contact: michael@knyvet.com
Band Contact: info@themagiccityofficial.com
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