Bussing indie rock artist Midwife has shared her latest single, “Vanessa,” an ode to Madeline’s dearly departed minivan. It’s a song about impermanence, a story of love lost. Midwife personifies her vehicle to express something painfully human, a journey of a relationship coming to an end, and what is left behind.
Releasing today, Midwife’s fourth studio album No Depression In Heaven was written primarily in the back of vans while on tour, endlessly, over the past few years. The record engages with the contemplative spirit of rock n roll from within a body in motion. It also explores themes of sentimentality, the interplay between dreams, memory, and fantasy, and a familiar subject seen throughout all of Midwife’s work: grief. Madeline Johnston takes a look at the tender and transcendent underneath the hard exterior of leather and studs, exposing a different side of the heavy music scene, where Johnston’s project has been living and evolving.
Inspired by ephemeral moments that make up life on tour, the totemization of vehicles, outlaws, and the psyche of America’s underbelly, No Depression In Heaven affirms Johnston’s existential status as a woman of the highway.
“It’s about the transient nature of what we do,” Johnston says. “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.”
Johnston may or may not believe that it’s literally possible to leave depression behind in the act of passing on, but she certainly believes that to thread the string, to weave and link the memories of lost friends, scenes, songs, and experiences: one has to trace the highway.
Are you vibing with Midwife’s single “Vanessa”?
