Interview: Magana bares her ‘Teeth’

The pandemic crippled human existence. Collectively, we floated through our lives aimless, confused, and angry. Art seemed to mirror our experiences, both suffering for and blossoming out of tragedy. Magana rooted herself in place, forgoing illusory experiences for those bred of blood, sweat, and tears. The here and now rattled the storyteller awake, and she poured her soul into Teeth, her second album, which seems to exist outside of time and space while inhabiting those uncomfortable pockets in which we often smother ourselves.

On a technical level, Teeth found Magana, known for touring with the likes of Mitski, writing and recording at the same time. The procedural shift elicited a more visceral byproduct, clearly lined in songs like “Matter” and “Afraid of Everybody.” Static clashes in waves over percussive elements, often ornamental but always cutting. “I stopped relying as much on the guitar or piano or live instruments to play while I wrote. The demos that I started with ended up being the final sessions, much to Jonathan Smith’s chagrin,” Magana tells B-Sides & Badlands. “He mixed the record as well as playing drums and the whole folder of sessions were just messes with tons of tracks muted or unmuted accidentally.”

“Random bits didn’t have fades. The songs were called something like ‘Piano Jam 2,’ if I hadn’t come into the session with an idea of the lyrics,” she continues. “They were all at different sample rates. He had a lot of patience but now when I deliver him any session he has a list of requests because he knows better than to just assume I’m not going to be chaotic.”

Magana wiggles between the cracks, allowing the arrangements to sail above the earth but feel somehow chained to the bottom of the ocean. The holes caught in the album’s exterior catch her voice like fish netting, but the sonic elements arrived without much conscious effort, at least initially. “I’m not particularly good at backing up from a project and knowing the overall picture immediately,” says Magana. “From my measly perspective sitting on my front porch watching my garden, I couldn’t perceive the scope of what I wanted the album to sound like. It was more like I was an archeologist, uncovering something that already existed piece by piece. It was fragile and slow and exciting but only because I had a lot of time.”

In that time, Magana broke herself into jagged parts, each slotting into another like a mosaic church window. The personal significance of making the album can not be overstated or oversimplified. It just exists as a profound movement in her body. “Because I’m a bit quieter and enjoy taking time to consider things, it is sometimes difficult to work with a lot of other people. Unless something comes to me right away, I tend to follow opinions that are put forth since I haven’t formed a solid conclusion one way or another,” she reflects. “In being so alone during the making of this album, I started to learn that I could rely on my own judgment and that I actually do have very strong opinions on production and arrangement. I just need a bit more time to work it out sometimes.”

Magana’s Teeth is out now on all streaming platforms.

In our Q&A, Magana discusses difficult songwriting, essentials from the album, and change.

What song was the most difficult to get right?

“To My Love” was definitely the most experimented-on track in the album. I wrote it on acoustic guitar and tracked it just holding the chords on whatever synth I had out at the moment. So it was a very blank canvas. It went through several iterations and none of them were working. I got to the point where I had already decided that there was no way it was going to be on the record and that I would just keep messing with it for fun.

Luckily, there was no pressure because I had so many other songs that could have taken its place, so I was just sort of using it as a practice canvas. I honestly think the thing that saved it was Jonathan Smith’s drum ideas, which were not at all what I would have come up with, and I loved immediately. It went into the folder with the rest of the songs I was working on, and Mike DiSanto fished it out of oblivion when he chose the songs that he thought should go on the album.

A song like “Mary Anne” is beautifully serene. What led you to write a song about your mom?

I mostly write about things that have had an emotional impact on me. Sometimes that’s a book or a movie. Sometimes it’s a friend’s story. Sometimes it’s stuff that I’m going through in my own life. If I’m being totally honest with myself, “Mary Anne” isn’t just about her as a person. It’s about how after my dad died I put a disproportionate amount of worry onto my mom. How I know that’s not fair or healthy, and I would stop if I could. But worrying about her during the pandemic brought that sort of old trauma back to the front of my mind. It’s a way of processing, and also hopefully letting her know that I’m at least aware of how unreasonable that is.

In “Garden,” you sing about the revelation that things need to be cared for instead of fixed. What was that emotional journey for you?

It is! I find it is literally a journey through the emotions. The work to understand how to love and care for oneself brings us through all sorts of feelings from current to some of the original ones planted in our origin stories. I think that’s what I’m doing in this record, going back and learning about myself and how I think I fit into the world.

“I Cannot Breathe” has an interesting backdrop, musically, particularly the choir of voices. What does that add to the song?

That’s sort of a question for each individual. For me, it adds a bit of scope to the vastness of the world. But who knows if that is how that’s going to translate to anyone else?

With “xxo,” what memories and thoughts did you hold up “the light for examination,” if any?

Not every emotion comes in a neat little package of a specific thought or memory. That’s why I sometimes think lyrics can be limiting. I have a lot of instrumentals that are explorations of an unspecified feeling; naming it something feels reductive, and trying to put a box around it feels incomplete. So instead, I spend a bit of time wandering in it to see if the picture will become clearer. Sometimes it’s pretty weird, and sometimes it creates this space that I think is able to hold our emotions quite nicely.

Inside “Afraid of Everybody,” you sing about your social anxiety. When did that start for you? And how do you navigate social situations with such weight on your shoulders?

I have no idea when that started, but I don’t think it’s that different from what anyone else does on a daily basis. We’re all holding a lot of untold stories on our backs and walking around showing bits and pieces of ourselves to others as we are able. I think you just get used to your own weight. As long as you can remember it’s there and name it without judgment, then you can work with it.

The musical threads stitching the album together are pretty evident. How did you keep the songs glued together but let them breathe on their own?

I didn’t! I just kept working, digging at little pieces of the puzzle here and there, and hoped something would come of it later. I made most of this album by myself, but there were a few key people that really shaped it into what it is now. Mike DiSanto went through song after song and found a throughline that he liked. He chose the tracks and the track order. I was so close to each song that I wasn’t able to see the bigger picture, and so having that totally new perspective shaped it from a pile of demos into an album.

Did you have any epiphanies in this process?

I learned that I do like collaboration, but that I can take space if I need it. I learned that a lot of producers I admire are also basically just “messing around” looking for new and interesting sounds and ideas. I learned that it doesn’t feel as vulnerable to share parts of yourself once you’ve accepted them.

Do you think you’ve changed through the last four years?

I certainly hope so. It’s really a matter of perspective, of course. There are many major things that are the same about my life. But if I haven’t learned a single thing in the past four years that changed me even if a little bit, wouldn’t that be sad?

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