Midwife - (2017) Like Author, Like Daughter LP

 

Whited Sepulchre ‎– WS003

 Under the name Sister Grotto, Denver based artist Madeline Johnston explores the limits of minimalism in transcendental drone-pop. With "Like Author, Like Daughter", Johnston uses the Midwife moniker to craft triumphant, fist-in-the-air anthems that tackle themes of dislocation and falling in (and out) of love with a person, a home and yourself.

"Like Author, Like Daughter" is a portrait of Johnston’s last year as a resident of Denver’s famed D.I.Y venue Rhinoceropolis which closed in a rash of politically motivated assaults on creative spaces across the United States. The album internalizes loss, addiction, abandonment and wrings them through distorted power chords, powerful leads, sheets of drone to create building, aching monuments to past-selves and lost relationships into a positivist statement of resilience and self-love. It’s a record that is impossible to listen to without a lump in your throat.

Performed, recorded and co-produced by Tucker Theodore (Buffalo Voice, Gunmothers Head), "Like Author, Like Daughter" was recorded in Denver at Rhinoceropolis and INAMBULANCE in Olympia, WA. LA,LD will be released with companion split cassette with Planning for Burial.

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"Blends waves of distortion with a delicate edge, finessing a kind of strained beauty. Her vocals sound distant and obscured underneath the layers of guitar static and noise. It creates a spectral effect, her presence fading in and out like some kind of memory recorded to tape, creating faint, comforting feelings of nostalgia that fade out as soon as they arrive." - CLRVYNT

"Johnston’s latest album, this time under the name Midwife, is a perfect record for bleak times, depicting the singer with head held high as she stares straight into the void. Like the abandoned mattress on the album cover, everything is in decay for Madeline Johnston, but the human spirit might just be the one exception." - Slow Breathing Circuit

"This is an album best experienced loud, as turning it up makes it all the easier to surrender to the songs' heartache and share in its affirmative, even at times celebratory spirit. Whatever the hardships Johnston's endured, songs such as “Way Out” and “Liar” reveal Like Author, Like Daughter's tone to be triumphant rather than resigned or mired in despair."