Review: Carina Magyar Has Issues

We absolute­ly adore Cari­na Magyar.

She has been such a tire­less cham­pi­on of the Austin com­e­dy scene and one of those über-pro­duc­tive super­hu­man types — between par­ent­ing 2 young girls, cul­ti­vat­ing the bible of Austin com­e­dy, last​gas​.org, work­ing full time, writ­ing, all on top of a suc­cess­ful com­e­dy career; she is incred­i­bly busy.

We were lucky to inter­view her dur­ing our inau­gur­al year of Com­e­dy Wham Presents and knew she was over­due for her ​“Vol­ume 2”, as I affec­tion­ate­ly call a guest’s return to the record­ing stu­dio. We man­aged some nifty tim­ing by hav­ing her be our fea­tured guest for our 2^nd Com­e­dy Wham Live show at the Fall­out The­ater soon after the release of her first album, Issues on the Sure Thing Records label and now avail­able on iTunes and Band­camp. If you know Cari­na and fol­low her on any social media plat­form, you’ve watched her relent­less and inno­v­a­tive approach­es to pro­mot­ing the album.

Hav­ing lis­tened to the album, I’m pleased to report that the pro­mo­tions and the wait were all worth it. Issues comes in at a tight 51 minute lis­ten, with a mix of short and long tracks and explores themes that those lucky enough to see Cari­na per­form reg­u­lar­ly, know are near and dear to her heart: her daugh­ters, work­ing life, and trans­gen­der issues (both per­son­al and polit­i­cal). Being trans­gen­der is incred­i­bly impor­tant to Cari­na, and she has this incred­i­ble abil­i­ty to turn a phrase, or frame her life as a trans­gen­der woman, in a way as to make it so per­fect­ly relat­able to her audi­ence, no mat­ter the gen­der and sex­u­al identity.

Cari­na has a lengthy back­ground as a writer and is used to giv­ing her sub­ject mat­ter a lot of thought and the ways that she presents the more con­fus­ing and chal­leng­ing ele­ments of trans­gen­der life give it a uni­ver­sal acces­si­bil­i­ty. In her open­ing track, ​“BLT”, she admits ​“it’s hard to pan­tomime sex”, and in con­text of her own life, she makes us under­stand how dif­fi­cult it is, but who among us would­n’t find it chal­leng­ing to pan­tomime sex; or, as in the case of ​“Get­ting Rid of Men”, find­ing effec­tive deter­rents to cat-calling?

Cari­na isn’t over­ly depen­dent on word­play, but I must admit find­ing joy­ful sur­prise when, on ​“Trans­gen­der TSA”, one of her lines (no spoil­ers, lis­ten for your­self) was a very sil­ly, play­ful twist of words. In that same track, I found myself think­ing ​“hmmm, I guess Cari­na’s not going to turn to the polit­i­cal chal­lenges (demons, attacks, mis­guid­ed attempts to leg­is­late against trans­gen­der men and women who just want to use bath­rooms in peace) of being trans­gen­der” and, like clock­work, she potent­ly and art­ful­ly runs through an attack against attempts to leg­is­late who gets to use which bathrooms.

To me, this was the peak crescen­do of the album, full of inten­si­ty and emo­tion, but because Cari­na is such a thought­ful com­ic, she gives us a few tracks to ease into what is eas­i­ly the most adorable clos­ing track of any album we’ve come across. Some might argue it’s not adorable at all, it’s quite creepy, but you’ll have to lis­ten for your­self to decide which side you fall on. Odds are very good, that Cari­na intend­ed you to feel a bit of both because that’s what a bril­liant writer and per­former does. It’s a won­der­ful treat that she’s been able to cap­ture this on her album and made it avail­able for broad consumption.