ynth-pop is everywhere. A listen to Magic Man’s debut album, Before The Waves, will show you a perfect example of it – centered around soaring, inviting melodies. Across social media, the excitement from the band ahead of its release proved that it was as highly anticipated by them as much as it was by their fans. The help of these fans and the many miles travelled from gig to gig helped Before The Waves make a success of itself in the US. Now, it’s finally made its way overseas with its release in the UK. “It was surreal when it first came out because we had been working on it for so long. Unlike our first album, Real Life Color, Before the Waves was out on iTunes and had a label roll out associated. It was something we’ve never experienced before or imagined would be happening.” says Magic Man guitarist Sam Lee.
With only a few short hours before playing a sold out show in Washington, D.C., the low hum of the bus engine can be heard as the members of Magic Man are sat comfortably in the lounging portion of their small, homey tour bus. Sat across from me is Gabe Goodman and Alex Caplow, while Justine Bowe and Lee are seated next to me; the only one missing in action is Joey Sulkowski. The four of us sit here for a couple of minutes reliving the last time I had seen them in DC. After sharing a sense of nostalgia, we decide to get things going. The humble nature of the band establishes a feeling of old friends chatting rather than a formal affair.
Not many bands so young create concept albums – where the songs are unified by a theme or story, but it’s safe to say that Before The Waves is ambitious in that sense. Where the group saw their debut as a chance to create an experience that would allow the listener to hear the different ranges of their work without having to listen to the entire record, their latest went in the opposite direction. “There are some albums that are concept albums, like Tommy, where the tracklisting is telling a story from start to end,” explains Lee. “We thought of Before The Waves in that way. Not trying to tell the story of one character from his birth to his death, but we did think about it as one particular listening experience: two sides of a vinyl record, even though many people don’t listen to music in that way anymore. Many people don’t even listen to albums all the way through anymore, but it was very cool to think about it as a 45 minute or so experience from start to finish.”
It’s a pretty rare sight to see a band that’s just a few years out of college playing with so much success and experience as these guys. Prior to the album’s release, Magic Man toured nonstop from coast to coast to play festivals and college events to performing on shows like Seth Meyers. But supporting fellow bands on tour like Walk the Moon, New Politics, and Panic! at the Disco played a big role in introducing their music through increasingly sold-out larger venues, hovering up fans as they went. Now Though, after months and months of nonstop traveling and promoting, Magic Man are at it again, this time with tteir first headlining tour. “This is the first time we’re going to a lot of cities as a headliner,” says Lee. “We’ve done headline shows before and a small headline tour on the west coast last year, a little before our record came out, but we’re really excited to be in the middle of our first national headline tour.”
From production to performances, this time around differs a great amount from their last co-headline with fellow WTGR favourites Smallpools. Not only does their show include a different set up now, the production has improved, creating a more confident performance. The size of their crew has maintained the same, but that only means that the workload has increased for this small staff. You would think a change in their schedule would be from late night partying; instead, it’s from the amount of hard and physical work this band puts into setting up and taking apart the stage. “It’s changed as much behind the scenes as much as it has out on stage.” explains bassist Gabe Goodman. “We play for a lot longer and have our own production and lighting rig,” says singer and keyboardist Justine Bowe. “A lot of bands, when they headline venues like this, might bring more crew. But we’re still running with pretty much the bare minimum. It’s a lot of prep work.”
The different aspects of touring aren’t the only things that have changed for them. So have fan experiences with their ever-growing popularity. Adoring fans just can’t get enough of Magic Man and don’t hold back from showing it. Whether it’s a blown up poster sized photo of them or a mass collaboration project, their fans have got it covered with quirky and original ideas. “One of the most heartwarming fan encounters was in Columbus, Massachusetts when we played the song ‘Honey’. It started and I looked out into the crowd and all of a sudden there were dozens of these ‘Thank You’ signs with a little heart.” describes singer Alex Caplow. “It was very emotional.” agrees Bowe. Aside from heartwarming encounters, “One of my funniest fan memories is when somebody had a giant cardboard cutout of my head, not making a cool face. It was just watching me the whole show.” laughs Bowe.
Not that this fan newfound fan interest always shows itself in the best ways. “Last night in New York, fans actually barged back in as we were tearing down the set to try and fight Sam.” says Caplow. “Then I got a phone call from Joey and I was thinking it must be because we’re loading out. I thought he’d be like ‘Did you load out something?’ or ‘Where’s my drum key?’, but instead he had just given his phone to some fans and they were asking me to come out and fight them again. We try to cultivate the very sassy twitter personality.” explains Lee. “But nonviolent.” adds Goodman. “Sassy, nonviolent.” laughs Lee.
In addition to all these new factors in their career, new music may be on it’s way in the near future. Just because Magic Man are on tour doesn’t mean that they’re not hard at work towards some new tunes. That however, doesn’t necessarily mean a new album anytime. Despite that, ideas and new sounds are in the works. “One thing that we’re super pumped about is that we started writing new songs slowly, sort of surely. We’re starting to experiment with some new ideas for the next record and hopefully we’ll be able to get some of that stuff out into the world as soon as possible.” explains Lee. “We’ve already started trying different things, kind of experimenting with different sounds and genres, that kind of thing. I’m not sure where we’ll exactly end up, but it’s been kind of fun to go into with no rules necessarily in terms of what we can or can’t do because of how it relates to Before the Waves or our other material.”
Magic Man continue to differentiate themselves from other bands. Their perspectives on touring and recording vary from the running punchline of it being a day job to being more of a hobby. It isn’t surprising coming from this lot because of their ambitious nature. The amount of gratitude they receive from their fans continue to fuel their hunger for pursuing and putting out music. “They’re both fun in different ways. Touring is kind of like, in a lot of ways, the reward. You get to play certain shows every night, you have responsibilities like playing a show, load in, load out, do some interviews, and occasionally shower with baby wipes. It’s a really nice schedule,” describes Lee. “Whereas recording, you have to spend 13 hours doing drums, or we need to write lyrics, or we need to edit the vocals and takes together. It expands and fills a lot of your time up, whereas touring, even though it’s very busy, you have a set schedule that you do every day. I love creating new music and being in the studio but it can be very time consuming in the same way touring can. They’re both really fun and really rewarding.”
Whilst they certainly can be, but both come with their respective boredoms and temptations. Life on the road could be difficult if this wasn’t such a close knit group of friends. When the guys of Magic Man are so down to earth and humble, being the only girl isn’t as hard as it seems either. “These guys make it really easy for me because they’re really thoughtful guys. We have to spend 24 hours a day together and everybody manages to not argue. I don’t know how much that family vibe is influenced by me being a woman, but they’re very kind.” describes Bowe. Though there are tough challenges and stereotypes about being a woman in the music industry, Bowe works hard to overcome them. “There are some specific stereotypes that I am more conscience of trying to avoid than the guys are more aware of. I think that for me, not that this isn’t important to the guys, it’s really important for people to see me as a musician before they see me as a performer. I try to really hold it down when it comes to my parts and I take an amount of pride in that just because I feel like a lot of people would try to hold it against a gal if she didn’t work twice as hard. I feel like sometimes I’m working harder than I might otherwise just to prove that I’m supposed to be here.”
Justine Bowe’s hard work is magnified by her passion for music. For one, Magic Man isn’t the only band she’s a part of. She and bandmate, Gabe Goodman, even have their own side project that has Caplow buzzing. “I’ve been listening to this band called PhotoComfort and all of their unreleased material. That of course consists of Justine and Gabe. It’s what I’ve been really vibing to lately.” says Caplow. PhotoComfort isn’t the only band these guys are ‘vibing’ to, but also their fellow supporting acts. “We’ve been into our tour mates’ music lately. Our tour mates, Tigertown, just released a new single with our friends and family, Neon Gold Records. I was just listening to it earlier, we’ve been hearing it on tour, it’s insanely catchy. It’s always fun to go on tour and get to know the music of the bands you tour with and get to listen to their songs, especially the unreleased ones. It’s pretty exciting.” adds Lee.
It stands to reason that Magic Man are full of excitement – a word the crops up time and time again – and are in no way done with this musical chapter in their lives. But this is just the beginning. Or to quote their song, it all starts here.
Before The Waves is out now in both the US and UK. All live photography by Victoria Sanders’.
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