Midwife + Matt Jencik’s ‘Never Die’ is a haunting, minimalist masterpiece

Midwife and Matt Jencik are ready to take us deep into the ether with ‘Never Die,’ a collaborative album that confronts death, memory, and meaning with eerie tenderness and sonic grace. The LP is out now via Relapse, and it’s already shaping up to be a quietly devastating listen.

The latest single Only Death Is Real comes with a stark and dreamlike video from director Yannick Mosimann, whose visual interpretation matches the track’s aching sense of space and beauty. As Mosimann puts it: “Jencik and Midwife’s music feels like it barely touches the ground — it’s slow, heavy, full of silence and grief, but also strangely bright.” And he’s right: this isn’t just music, it’s an atmosphere, a weight, a soft gaze into the dark.

The collaboration itself was years in the making. Johnston (aka Midwife) and Jencik (you might know him from Implodes, Don Caballero, or touring with Slint) first crossed paths in 2015, bonding again in 2018. By 2019, Jencik had started writing a set of voice-driven songs — a departure from his past drone-heavy releases. He tracked the skeletons of these songs straight to four-track cassette in his basement. They passed briefly through another collaborator’s hands before he realized the right voice for the project had been glowing in the periphery all along: Johnston.

Johnston’s minimalist approach and her unique, haunting voice were exactly what the songs needed. They struck a deal: Jencik would write all the words and melodies; Johnston would bring them to life. And bring them to life she did — not just vocally, but as an engineer and arranger. Working remotely from her home in Trinidad, Colorado, she layered keyboard, lead guitar, and spectral textures around Jencik’s barebones recordings from Chicago. Together, they sculpted something immersive, intimate, and deeply felt — all without ever stepping into the same room.

That emotional and physical distance bleeds beautifully into the album’s sound. Jencik’s voice is earthy and immediate, while Johnston’s floats somewhere just out of reach, like a ghost singing from another dimension. Their vocal dynamic dances on a fine line between grounded and ethereal, the real and the imagined. It’s the kind of music that slowly hypnotizes you — looping, swelling, dissolving — until you forget where it started.

‘Never Die’ doesn’t pretend to have answers. But it isn’t afraid to sit with the big stuff — grief, finality, the temporary flicker of life. And in doing so, it reminds us: everything ends, yes, but we still get to feel, and love, and sing. The title may insist we’ll Never Die, but in every track, the presence of death is a constant hum — one that only makes the beauty burn brighter.

Never Die is out now on Relapse Records.
Cue it up, dim the lights, and let yourself drift.

‘Never Die’ track list

1. Delete Key
2. Don’t Protest (Too Much)
3. Flower Dragon
4. The Last Night
5. Bend
6. Never Die
7. Only Death Is Real
8. September Goths
9. Organ Delay
10. Rickety Ride