Review: Midwife at Hi-Dive on Valentine's Day
Soft tunes and warm vibes with the 'heaven metal' leader at the dive bar.
Seeing Midwife perform is sort of like observing the passage of time on a wristwatch: slow, steady, clicking and whirring. There is a valiant perseverance in how Madeline Johnston — who recently returned to Colorado after last year’s Orbweaving found her recording in the dry borderlands of New Mexico with Vyva Melinkolya and the desert wildlife — paces herself and her audience’s expectations. Life comes with a lot of crushing, grieving moments. Her music asks us not avoid them, but to bear witness to and even embrace them.
Her Valentine’s Day showcase at Hi-Dive has become a tradition — at least for Denver lovers of her brand of ‘heaven metal’, rock and cheap drinks. This year, she split the bill with three rock bands — Water On the Thirsty Ground, Cherished, and American Culture — each playing a tight, 20-minute set. They were some of the better rock groups I’ve seen since moving here during the pandemic, with sharp hooks, flair and a dynamic between players. Johnston even joined American Culture during one of their songs. I appreciated the variety throughout the night, especially since I arrived at the venue as Water On the Thirsty Ground was finishing a faithful rendition of Limp Bizkit’s “Nookie”.
Slipping through the crowd in the dark and narrow venue, Johnston smiled warmly toward her friends and community surrounding her music (much of which is recorded and credited with collaborators). That warmth extended to her music onstage, performed with rudimentary keys, a loop pedal and a pink telephone handset as a microphone. Singing through the headset made her sound further from us than she really was, a crackling voice message delivered in real time.
After a short instrumental intro, Johnston played back-to-back cuts from Orbweaving, a highlight of last year’s ambient music releases. Her skeletal framing of “Miss America” and “Hounds of Heaven”, tracked by ticking drum presets, made me focus more on the quiet tragedy of her lyrics. “I’m all alone/there’s no place like home,” she sang, the words lingering in the air. I was less intrigued by “Hounds of Heaven”, whose chorus is poetic (“the hounds of heaven run like hell”) but repeated so many times as to make the song feel stationary.
Johnston’s songwriting still carries the day, though, and it held the black-clad audience in the no-frills club at a hush. “Vanessa”, which she said was about her now late, beloved minivan, and closer “S.W.I.M.” were sturdy shelters in the barren landscape in which her music resides. The cyclical nature of “S.W.I.M.”, in particular, was resounding, as was her plea: “I don’t want to live forever/I don’t want to stay the same.” It’s a profound and terrifying sentiment, one that on Valentine’s Day warmed my tender heart. What could be more ‘heaven metal’ than that?
Setlist:
Prayer Hands
Miss America
Hounds of Heaven
Vanessa
Christina’s World
S.W.I.M.