Sickworld

Midwife is the project of Madeline Johnston, a self taught multi-instrumentalist and recording engineer, currently based in Southern New Mexico by way of Denver, Colorado, where she spent the last decade+ developing her sound and community. Midwife began while Madeline was a resident of the beloved/infamous DIY space Rhinoceropolis in 2014. She has released three albums with The Flenser, most recently, Luminol (2021), which received national and international acclaim. On stage, Johnston is known for her sparse, emotionally charged experimental pop music that can silence a crowd of hundreds. On record, she produces intricate and lush sonic environments in her own little corner of the heavy music scene. She describes her sound as "Heaven Metal," AKA emotional music about devastation: catharsis. Johnston writes primarily about grief, and the many faces it can inhabit. 

Johnston says of the track, “I started collecting globes. Sickworld was written in late 2021, during a long, cold winter. The world is sick. I'm coming down with it. I wanted to relate the unrest and ailments experienced externally with the general malaise I had been feeling emotionally for a long time. The lyrics are a culmination of festering thoughts I was carrying around, and digestible pieces of larger ideas like faith, sobriety, and death. It is also largely about being homesick for another time. Timesick. But this is being homesick for a place you can never return to, because it doesn't exist. The world is sick, it needs medicine. This song is about healing.”

About the Hardly Art Singles Series:

2022 marks 15 years of Hardly Art and 15 years of sharing music we love from artists we love. From The Duchess and the Duke to Hunx and His Punx to Protomartyr to La Luz to My Idea, we’ve been lucky to be the label home for some of our favorite artists from the past 15 years. In the spirit of continuing the legacy, we’re unbelievably stoked to launch Hardly Art 15. Over the course of the year we’ll share 15 new singles from 15 of our favorite artists that we think should be your favorite artists too.