SHOW REVIEW: Midwife as Quietly Captivating at The Empty Bottle

By Rivka Yeker

It is an incredible feat to – despite being in a rowdy, loud, crowded small-ish space like the Empty Bottle – create an all-encompassing sound that manages to drown out everything surrounding it. Madeline Johnston AKA Midwife opened for The Body in Chicago on June 27th, quietly coming onto the stage with her guitar and pedals, just before putting on her headphones and lulling into her one-person set. 

Performing songs off her 2021 record Luminol, Midwife created an ambiance of solitude on stage, pulling everyone into her little corner of dreamy, shoegaze inspired – as she likes to call it – heaven metal. The description itself feels apt because her music takes you elsewhere. Even though I was standing around people who were mildly too drunk or louder than I would’ve liked, Johnston was able to fill the entire room, hypnotizing me with her existentialist lyricism and melancholic guitar melodies. Using pedals for distortion and a general drone overtone, her set was visceral and magnetic. 

Playing “Songs of an Unborn Son” off her 2017 record Like Author, Like Daughter, Johnston’s voice subtly yet profoundly carried the lyrics, “Why can’t you see me?” repeatedly with the same guitar crescendo supporting their weight. As all her songs do, standing at the Empty Bottle for the first time since the pandemic started, I had an intense moment of self-awareness and simultaneous gratitude. It is something that will probably keep happening as I continue to go back to shows, but regardless of the heavy nature of the lyrics, I wanted to be nowhere else. 

There’s something about going to a show that starts at 10:30 PM after getting off a closing shift, seeing people you haven’t seen in year(s) and swaying to someone as quietly captivating as Midwife. It was the perfect set just before The Body, who took me out of this reality for the 20-30 minutes they were on stage. Everything about this show was deeply needed, a moment alone in a crowd watching music that wrecks me after spending a long time yearning for this exact feeling.