Brat summer is over, welcome to slowcore autumn. OK, it doesn’t have the same ring to it. But over the past fortnight, as the nights have started to darken that little bit quicker, a bunch of albums by high-profile slowcore acts such as Duster and 40 Watt Sun have also made their way into the world. Alongside them you’ll find Midwife’s arresting ‘No Depression In Heaven’.
This genre digs around in generally very sad ground, to put it bluntly. There’s aren’t really any ‘happy’ slowcore records. The style is all about emulating the feelings of melancholy and/or depression, conjuring the slowly-creeping weight that pushes down on your shoulders during those dark days and nights of the soul.
Appropriately, ‘No Depression In Heaven’ is as light and cheery as its title. The fourth solo full-length from Madeline Johnston goes to some potent places, conjuring images of resplendent landscapes enshrouded in fog.
Johnston’s palette consists of little more than guitar chords and swirling ambient atmospherics, accompanied by her delicate voice and the occasional sparse beat. These impressionistic vistas are beautifully rendered, with Droving in particular possessing surprising density given its limited ambient arrangement.
Her lyrics are equally impressive, if occasionally troubling. Autoluminescent acutely reflects a troubled mind, flicking between journeying “into the black hole” and declaring “I’m greater than God in light”, while the title track consists of ringing guitar lines and the spectral repetition of the word “crying”. Like something from the depths of quantum physics, ‘No Depression In Heaven’ appears slight but its weight is almost unfathomable.
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