On the swift follow-up to their 2024 EP, San Francisco’s Magic Fig take that blueprint of their sound and add a little more of everything: color and creativity, scope and sonic exploration. Formed of ten exuberant new songs, Valerian Tea sees the psych-pop supergroup (ft. members of The Umbrellas, Healing Potpourri, Almond Joy, Whitney's Playland, and Blades of Joy) dive even further into the lush and layered sound that defined last year’s breakthrough, opening up a whole new realm to be explored.
Founding members Matt Ferrara (bass), Muzzy Moskowitz (guitar), and Jon Chaney (keyboards, piano) work alongside Inna Showalter (vocals, mellotron) and Taylor Giffin (drums and percussion); all arriving from varying musical projects across the always-vibrant San Francisco scene.
Built from a swirling mass of instrumentation, which includes piano, synthesizers, glockenspiel, organ, 12-string acoustic and electric guitar, Valerian Tea is the sound of a band making for themselves a bold new world, a tumbling place of dizzying dynamics and overwhelmingly colorful vision. The album was primarily written before last year’s debut release, then brought to life in a patient, drawn-out process, allowing the band to push the boundaries of their sound and vision.
“This record came together mostly through demos written by band members that were developed over many practice sessions,” guitarist Muzzy Moskowitz says of the band’s process. “Inna usually wrote vocals and lyrics after most of the musical structure was established. We spent much longer perfecting this record than the first one, but otherwise the process was the same: record the band live then spend months overdubbing and tweaking.”
Joel Robinow, of Once and Future Band, returned as producer while Jason Kick stepped into the role of engineer. Once the musical foundation was set, lead vocalist and lyricist Inna Showalter recorded many of the vocals at her house, using a closet that she converted into a vocal booth. It’s this process that gives her voice an organic, lived-in quality when paired with the kaleidoscopic nature of the instrumentals.
Lead single and title-track ‘Valerian Tea’ is an animated Broadcast-esque blend of both warmth and detachment. Inna Showalter’s vocals dancing alongside a backdrop of shuffling percussion, shifting time signatures; gloriously choppy keys and guitars. “Valerian root extract was a popular remedy for anxiety and insomnia in Eastern Europe where I was born,” Inna explains. “The song is an exploration of how I was shaped and influenced by the experiences of my maternal lineage. This one was really fun and effortless for me and gave me the chance to experiment and take some risks.”
Bursting at the seams with vibrant ideas from the outset, ‘Flammarion’ is the album’s opening track and leans into the band’s more psychedelic flourishes. Taking its name from Camille Flammarion, a French astronomer and author who was deeply interested in the spiritual and metaphysical realm, the track is a swirling, dream-like concoction of hazy vocals and noisier musical excursions that glow and shimmer through nearly six-minutes of abandon. “Flammarion probably came the easiest and was the first one we wrote for this record,” Jon Chaney says of the song. “It came together pretty naturally with everyone contributing different sections and ideas, that started with Muzzy and I sending voice memos back and forth for the intro synth part.”
Penultimate track ‘Goblin’ is a little more direct and personal. “This is a song about the fickleness of inspiration,” Inna explains. “It’s also a song about wearing disguises and not being authentic, which causes harm in the long run. The desire to be accepted and ‘good’ cannot always coexist with following your heart.” Building from a spacious, somewhat drifting opening half, the song shifts at the midway-point. Light and color pour in and the whole thing grows into something altogether more exuberant. Guitars gleam, the temperature rises, and Inna’s vocals fade into the background. The result is a wondrous, skewed take on the band’s influences; from the decadence of Caravan and Pink Floyd to more straight-up Krautrock aesthetics.
With lyrics touching on memory, myth, and melancholy, Valerian Tea is many things at the same time: light and dark, land and air, tangible and completely abstract.Valerian Tea feels like an unlocking, a deep-dive down the rabbit-hole into a world that feels altogether more vivid and flamboyant. It’s an album of absolute balance, a glowing adventure to get truly lost in – and we probably all need a big dose of that.
photo credit: Kittie Krivacic
bio: Tom Johnson
