Midwife have announced their fourth album, No Depression In Heaven, set to release September 6 via The Flenser. The first single, “Killdozer,” was recently released The album explores themes of sentimentality, the interplay between dreams, memory, and fantasy, and a familiar subject seen throughout all of Midwife’s work: grief.
Presave No Depression In Heaven here.
Madeline Johnston took a look at the tender and transcendent underneath the hard exterior of leather and studs, all whilst exposing a different side of the heavy music scene where Johnston’s project has been growing and evolving. It’s been inspired by ephemeral moments that aid with making life on tour what it is: the totemization of vehicles, outlaws and the psyche of America’s underbelly. It was to affirm Madeline’s existential status as a woman of the highway.
The new single is an ode to a city lost from the aftermath of gentrification. The story keys in on Marvin Heemeyer who is a muffler repair shop owner who went on demolition spree prior to ending his life in a small Colorado town in 2004. The music video was written mainly in the back of vans whilst on tour over the past few years. No Depression in Heaven was recorded in New Mexico between the years of 2021 and 2023.
Madeline Johnston on “Killdozer”:
“It’s about the transient nature of what we do. Our bodies are vessels—Our bodies are, together, a vessel, a vehicle, and that togetherness allows us to become something larger than ourselves in the slipstream of the unconscious, droving.”
The fleeting moments are like beads that might sit, separate or scatter. Nonetheless, it’s something like the collective participation in an underground scene or a series of 25 shows in 25 cities in one month. Something like that has the power to string together these elements. Madeline’s ability to braid familiar and occasionally borrowed phrases into minimally hypnotizing yet maximally conceptual powerful songs. “Killdozer” and “Low” in particular provide a sense to them that Madeline’s vocals have arrived as a distant broadcast.
Midwife is a project that fearlessly commits to the tropes that characterize the fact that it has become a brand new system on it’s own. The effect isn’t solipsism but it’s a never-ending, generous idiosyncrasy. Regardless of how “gauzy” and “ethereal” the music may be, No Depression In Heaven doesn’t fall short of that sense of personality.
No Depression In Heaven Tracklist:
- Rock N Roll Never Forgets
- Autoluminescent
- Droving
- Vanessa
- Killdozer
- Better Off Alone
- No Depression In Heaven
