In Lausanne, Switzerland, wildflower trails blaze with ultraviolet color, mountains of myth
surround a lake of sapphire. It’s a beauty so intense that it pacifies itself, turns still, and silent.
Musician Mary Middlefield—who, for all her life, has called Lausanne home—splits the
landscape apart, turning it into a wild scream. Her music like a howl in the beautiful wilderness.
A former student of classical violin, 22 year-old Middlefield now wields high drama, desire, and
vulnerability as keys to making meaning in a complicated universe, where love and abuse
coincide. Her roomy, stream-of-consciousness songs veer between a keening pop-punk fuelled
intensity and a lovely folk-inspired softness, inspired by the likes of Elliott Smith, Nick Drake, Jeff
Buckley, as well as more recent artists like Claud, Jockstrap and The Japanese House.
Her story as a singer-songwriter began three years ago with a broken heart and a bruised ego.
“He dumped me in the middle of the day while I was carrying his groceries,” she says. With
nothing to lose, she figured it was the perfect time to experiment. She picked up the guitar, and
taught herself chords and riffs from Radiohead’s songbook. “I hope I’ll get their discography
down to a T one day,” she says. From there, piece by piece and note by note, she began
stitching herself back together, turning her pain into something generative, fortifying. Through
song, she began to reclaim everything she’d lost in that relationship and its subsequent
dissolution.
She set to work on her debut album "Thank You Alexander", a remarkably clear-eyed work that
documents the process of heartbreak and grief in unflinching detail, spinning despair into
indelible hooks. It was a way of establishing her own perspective, her own agency. ‘Alexander’
might have broken her heart, but in the end it was her who won; she was the one who got to
sing about it.
With a short 10 day deadline, she thrived in the studio, her brain constantly fizzing with ideas; “I
have ADHD, so stressful situations are my prime time,” she says. With each song, she ventured
down into the basement of her being, revisiting the most agonizing moments of her life, digging
even deeper below the heartbreak she’d just experienced—to the abuse and grooming she’d
endured as a young woman while playing classical music.
“I had a woman that was very emotionally abusive, especially when I first started studying, I was
her primary target,” she says. It’s a topic Middlefield explores in greater and more nuanced
detail on "Poetry (for the scorned and lonely)", her latest EP and follow-up to "Thank You
Alexander". The record covers not only the emotional abuse Middlefield endured while studying
in the classical music field, but the physical abuse she was subjected to as well. “As young
women, we’re often preyed on by people with authority who not only use toxic methods to get
the results they’d like, but also project their desires onto their students, whether sexual,
professional or both,” she says. In Middlefield’s case, that exploitative authority figure was her
teacher of 3 years. “I was supposed to learn from him but instead, he’d text and call in the
middle of the night, stalk me in hallways, invite me to occasions where I wasn’t supposed to be,
touch me in places where he shouldn’t have laid his hands on. Having that song as song
material is cool now, but actually living through those stories wasn’t as fun.”
Across the EP’s 8 tracks, Middlefield displays a vast emotional rage, letting her feelings speak
for themselves, rather than tying them up into neat resolutions. The EP is peppered with sadistic
love songs, including ‘Young and Dumb’ which examines the ways in which trauma and love
can co-exist. Reflecting back on the abuse she had been subject to, Middlefield says: “What
made it easier for me to be a prey is that I became very infatuated by the person who abused
me.” It was, she found, “great song material.” “Trauma/love/trauma/love,” Middlefield sings over
and over like picking petals from a flower. “I've read a lot about people that are stuck in abusive
situations and how they often don't leave because they have nowhere to go and being
completely alone might actually feel worse. That's something I really felt,” she explains. She’s
felt the deep pain from the realization that accompanies that thought: In order to cut the ties of
trauma, one must cut oneself off from the source of attention altogether. It’s an incredibly
complex set of emotions, rarely discussed even between the closest of friends, that Middlefield
attends to with great clarity and bravery on the EP. “Being alone—not feeling loved or feeling
hated and not receiving any attention—is really fucking hard. I spent a lot of time last year
thinking I wanted to go back to studying with that same dude. A part of me just really didn’t want
to deal with the isolation, even though I always knew it was 100% wrong.”
However, from writing these songs, Middlefield has regained the confidence she’d previously
lost to her cruel loves. It’s even given her the gall to write something like ‘Sexless’, a rollicking
and raunchy number that really puts it all out there: “I haven’t had sex in the past year,” it opens.
“I’d already pushed my sincerity all the way out there with the sad songs, but with this, I wanted
to push myself towards embarrassment,” Middlefield explains. In the end, she found, laying it all
out wasn’t so embarrassing at all: “It gave me a new perspective. there's nothing really
embarrassing about not having sex or being single or not having a partner or just not even
wanting it.”
In that way, Middlefield has curbed the desire for attention and validation that had been instilled
in her. Being alone, she’s found, isn’t so bad: “I also kind of stopped caring,” she says, “I used to
be so desperate for feedback, advice and help.” Now, she’s making music with collaborators
with whom she shares joy as well as the utmost trust, she’s unafraid to censor herself for
anyone else’s benefit. Her songwriting is only getting closer to the ugly, embarrassing,
non-linear reality of being alive as a result. “Life isn’t pretty, finding love and taking care of
yourself and your loved ones is really fucking hard; a lot of people are cruel and mean. If just
getting through the day is hard for most of the people I know, myself included, why would I try to
make anything prettier than it actually is?”
The EP is a purging of emotion, one that’s allowing Middlefield to move forward with a clear
mind and a clean palette. But for now, this is music for the people who are stuck, scorned and
lonely. Middlefield invites you to suffer and yearn and scream alongside her.
