Boston modern rock dynamo explores spiritual liberation, rejuvenation, and rebirth on a gritty n’ glittery inaugural LP out Friday, May 22
There’s a playful old saying, often muttered during an act of retreat, where a person would determine they were a lover and not a fighter. It suggests a shift from antagonism to affection, while both acts remain purely in the physical form. Some of the greatest albums of our generation straddled a fine line between loving and fighting, blurring the spaces in between, borrowing the elements of one from another, and positioning each as reflective of the other.
The Magic City’s self-titled debut album, set for release on Friday, May 22 on digital, vinyl, and compact disc, is both a lover and a fighter, slinging its tender aggression through the Boston modern rock band’s melodic lens with a push and pull that cradles and consumes. These songs, 10 in total, come to life with the record release party later that night, alongside special guest Lonely Leesa and the Lost Cowboys, at The Burren in Somerville.
The mood across the lover and fighter spectrum first surfaced through via a pair of early singles that set a tone for what was to come, and shines like the morning and aches through the night through dynastic new single and focus track, “Ozma Is My Shadow,” hitting the streams on April 24.
What emerges throughout is a defiant and physical album from The Magic City quartet, exploring themes of spiritual liberation, rejuvenation, and rebirth, and showcasing sounds that run from the gritty to the glittery, where the band’s sterling sonic cocktail of Britpop, glam, post-punk, power-pop, art-rock, and indie stirs with the all the aural ghosts that came before it.
This is an album that acts as a clarion call, where four veteran artists – Adam Anderson (lead guitar, vocals), David Jackel (vocals, guitar, synth), Ken Marcou (acoustic and electric drums), and Mike Quinn (vocals, bass) – come together to find a greater tribe assembled in various pockets around the world.
Taking its moniker from a fictional city that exists in mental spaces as a combination of their home of Boston and spiritual city of London, the sound of The Magic City echoes the style, spirit, and vitality of both real-life places.
Assembled over a shared love of the classic records that raised us, the band 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. It’s a journey that required lots of fighting, and lots of loving.
Sometimes no one knew the difference. And The Magic City knows it shares certain subculture interests with a particular type of person.
“We want to find our people,” says Jackel. “It’s that family tree of music culture that began with the Beatles and Stones, Bowie and Velvets, and then punk, post-punk, goth, new wave, Britpop. Angel Olsen channeling Serge Gainsbourg. Their random playlist could be Kate Bush, Bauhaus, Bat for Lashes, Pixies, and it would all make sense.”
The Magic City’s own playlist began in late 2023, when provocative debut single “Roadrunner Vs Your Mother” made a striking first impression, reversing the course of anything that was making waves at the time, eschewing the bedroom pop minimalism of indie for a mountainous sense of grandeur, with Jackel’s vocals echoing the seductive strength of David Bowie and Brett Anderson. A soaring anthem that leaned in on British Invasion inspiration and a poignant dose of Cool Britannia, it zeroed in on the human element of relationships, family, and getting older.
A few months later, a second single surfaced in “A Series of Chemicals,” a song about the chemistry that binds us, with Quinn taking over vocal duties and the band shifting into a punk and power-pop driven sound, where the stormy shores of England were vacated for American-fueled, sun-baked rock and roll. It showed a startling diversity in sound, and suggested The Magic City were more than just a name found in the import section of your local record store.
And then, nothing.
Two years have passed, and in that time The Magic City returned to their creative bunkers, writing and recording the album, armed with an arsenal of demos from past projects and this newfound one. Produced by The Magic City, the album was recorded at a trio of locations in the fertile neighborhoods of the city – Mad Oak Studios and Shave Media in Allston and Bluetone Studio in Somerville – with Quinn engineering and mixing the album, with additional engineering by Anderson, Jackel, Marcou, and longtime collaborator David Grabowski.
“I feel that any song I pitch to the band is solid enough to stand on its own already,” adds Quinn, “but I encourage the others to make it their own. Adam, Ken, and Dave arrange, rearrange, and sculpt it with their own ideas, and the result is often very different from (and way cooler than) what I originally pictured. Each of us has also contributed engineering on this record: Ken with his electronic drums, Adam with guitars, and Dave and I recording each other’s vocals. I love the collaborative process, and these guys are outstanding collaborators.”
The infectiousness is echoed by Jackel. This is an album that took a great deal of time, effort, and emotion to get right. To find that balance, to find that soul. An endless series of takes, tracks, and all the stuff behind the studio curtain only fueled the cohesion and consistency of this record.
“I now feel confident and energized,” Jackel reveals. “We took our time finessing the details of these songs, exploring them from every angle, and found ourselves as a band in the process. We could have released a viable version of the album two years ago, but we were meticulous in our writing and recording.”
The first dose of Magic City modernity arrives through “Ozma Is My Shadow,” a seductive guitar-driven glam-rock shifter that punches and kisses with the same animal magnetism. Originally conceived through an old acoustic demo that has kind of a Lou Reed-meets-‘60s girl group vibe, its propulsive musical punch, at times almost shoegazing in its wall of sound, is belied perhaps by its lyrical theme of how the soul transcends gender.
“When I was 9 or 10 I read The Land of Oz, in which (spoiler alert!), the boy protagonist discovers he was actually a princess at birth, magically transformed and hidden as a boy,” Jackel reveals. “When he transforms back, he or she is still essentially the same character – the body is where the soul lives, but it’s not the soul. This concept stayed with me. The song isn’t a retelling of that story, but it springs from that revelation.”
Elsewhere, a sense of persistence through world-weariness permeates the album’s but also its rich storylines and gravitational world-building. The anthemic “New Eyes” opens with a slinky atmospheric energy that pulls us close before exploding in a pent-up animosity, and album closer “Lost at Sea” delivers a big room energy that harkens back to ‘90s alternative rock, with enough “la la la’s” to make a certain Suede vocalist blush.
Jackel’s lyricisms play out like open pages of a jaded person’s ripped and torn diary, exuding a sense of frustration and anticipation by someone who’s seen how life once was, and who aches for a new morning.
“I’m drawn to lyrical themes like spiritual liberation, rejuvenation, and rebirth,” he adds. “The opening song, ‘Ozma Is My Shadow’, culminates in a mantra of ‘we’re gonna break out’, and the closing track, ‘Lost at Sea’, is built around the line ‘now I’m free’. I generally steer away from politics and social commentary in my lyrics, but ‘New Eyes’ deals with the impulse to retreat into cultural assimilation during menacing times. For my part, there’s no unifying theme to the lyrics, other than what seems to occupy my mind these days.”
Quinn, the ying to Jackel’s yang, cites The Magic City’s mid-tempo numbers, like “Airtight Alibi” and “New Eyes” that show off the range of the band, where disparate sounds grasp hands like lovers on the street, and the push and pull in the band’s sound play no favorites.
“These were not necessarily the ‘obvious’ singles,” Quinn notes, “but they are melodically interesting and have powerful instrumental arrangements. I think the record is pretty deep; and it’s my hope that people are inclined to avoid the ‘skip’ button when they put it on.”
And each moment has a transportive effect on both the listener and its creator. Anderson’s lead guitar on the powerful and punchy “Don’t Forget Me When She’s Gone” takes us back to the enchantment of the leather jacket side of Britpop, where “Airtight Alibi” leans more on the tracksuit end of the scene.
Jackel says some elements take him back to being an angsty teenager in New Jersey, allowing the Pixies and Matthew Sweet to provide the soundtrack. And Marcou’s hybrid percussion on “An Open Feast” opened a new musical lane for the band, mixing acoustic and electronic drumming for its hypnotic allure.
There are certain moments strewn across that record that tease at what’s to come. But for now, the glossy powder keg that resides at the core of The Magic City sound is finally ready to be viewed through a panoramic lens. It’s music for the lover and the fighter, because in 2026, we all need to be skilled in both. And in both life and music, who really knows what comes after the dust settles?
“We’ve got the songs for several more albums in the tank,” Jackel concludes. “I thought a straight-up rock record that honors our shared influences would be an appropriate first act. The next album should be different. I’m working on new demos that explore other genres like cabaret, 1960s orchestral pop, 1980s electronica, surf rock, and so on. We’ll see what gels.”
Connect with The Magic City:
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The Magic City is:
Adam Anderson: Lead guitar, vocals
David Jackel: Vocals, guitar, synth
Ken Marcou: Acoustic and electric drums
Mike Quinn: Vocals and bass
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‘The Magic City’ production credits:
Produced by The Magic City
Recorded at Mad Oak Studios in Allston, MA; Bluetone Studio in Somerville, MA; and Shave Media in Allston, MA
Engineered by Mike Quinn
Additional engineering by Adam Anderson, David Grabowski, David Jackel, Ken Marcou
Mixed by Mike Quinn
Mastered by Pat DiCenso
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 for the band’s highly anticipated self-titled debut album, arriving in May 2026 with new single “Ozma Is My Shadow.” As the great Hunter S. Thompson once wrote, “Buy the ticket, take the ride.”
