Ethel Cain: The Gothic South’s Ethereal Icon

(originally published to CANTA on 27/3/23)

In May of last year, I came across a TikTok recommending the debut LP of a burgeoning artist named Ethel Cain. The project was advertised as simply gorgeous songwriting over exhaustive track lengths, and as someone who would willingly listen to a sixteen-minute Car Seat Headrest song, the sell fascinated me.

You know what? I enjoyed it on the first listen, it got my seal of approval. I did think that the tracks were on the long side but the vocals, production, and storytelling were undeniably captivating. Little did I know at the time though, Preacher’s Daughter would grow on me like no other album, continuing to climb, and climb, and climb my album of the year list until it dethroned JID’s The Forever Story.

Now, before I go into insufferable, yet magazine-appropriate, depth about how stupidly brilliant Preacher’s Daughter is, let me give you a background on the virtuoso behind the Ethel Cain moniker, Hayden Anhedönia.

From the crown of Hebrew biblical text tattooed along her forehead to the muffled preaching on her LP’s opening track, Hayden’s upbringing is explicitly woven into her art and aesthetic. Being the daughter of a Floridian deacon and having been raised Southern Baptist, much of her adolescence was grounded in Christian ideology.

At the age of twelve, Hayden came out to her family as gay, and on her twentieth birthday, she came out as a trans woman, dividing her town, frozen in tradition. Over her formative years, her involvement with the town’s Church dwindled but her artistic interest in Christianity stuck.

Hayden’s ambivalent relationship with her religious past forms the basis of her artistry. On this topic, she says, "Whether I like it or not, God always has and always will be a huge part of my life. Whether He's being used as a comforting figure or a threat, I've always been surrounded by it. It's not really something you can walk away from.”

Over the next few years, while studying film, she began experimenting with reverb-soaked, atmospheric tracks under the names White Silas and Atlas. The end of 2019 saw Hayden professionally adopt the Ethel Cain stage name, putting out two EPs, Carpet Bed & Golden Age. After moving to Indiana with a new publishing contract in hand, Hayden refined her southern-influenced sound with the release of her best-produced EP yet, Inbred. The highlight of Inbred is Crush, a puppy-love-infused anthem. This track and its dreamy chorus walked so her later hit-single American Teenager could run. 

Now with a series of lo-fi, Americana-drenched snippets out, the seed had been planted for the Ethel Cain character. Her tales of love and faith found and lost collectively pointed towards a bigger picture, soon to be unravelled in the form of her debut studio album. 

Preacher’s Daughter is a concept album following the life and death of Ethel Cain, the daughter of a small-town preacher turned freezer bride. Track-by-track the project reads as a subversion of the traditional, 20th-century American dream, tapping into Southern Gothic ideas such as intergenerational trauma, abuse, and poverty. She not only thematically draws from Southern influence but stylistically does, incorporating folk and country elements into her dream pop-heavy sound to create beautifully haunting soundscapes. 

Family Tree (Intro) opens on harrowing bass notes amid muffled preaching. It’s a wicked tone-setter of a track, establishing the overarching theme of the LP: intergenerational trauma. It foreshadows the fate of Cain at the hands of a brutal hereditary cycle.

Probably the most playlist-ready track of the bunch, American Teenager is a faux-pop album with an anti-war sentiment, which funnily enough was one of Barack Obama’s favourite tracks of the year. Here, Ethel comes clean about the pitfalls of striving to be an American Teen, where the reality is shrouded in pressure, weighty expectations, and alcohol abuse. This is the track you can separate from the story of the album the most because it just rocks in almost any setting.

As heavy piano chords are drawn out, Cain is given room to deliver a commanding vocal performance on A House in Nebraska. In classic Ethel Cain fashion, it Transgresses from a stripped-down torch song to a powerhouse track. Throughout Hayden’s work, there are a series of characters that go unnamed in her songs but are canonically established outside of her music. The ex-lover Ethel reminisces about here is Willoughby, who Hayden anoints as “the one”. 

Western Nights marks the wheels rolling into action storywise as Ethel fills the void left by Willoughby with a new troubled man. This slowcore ballad starts to dig its teeth into those Southern Gothic ideas, dealing with ideas of abuse and poverty. 

Track five, Family Tree, reprises the opening bassline. Contextually, this follows the death of Logan in a police shootout but lyrically begins to set up act two of the album. Act two? That’s right. Preacher’s Daughter was initially conceived as a film instead of an album, which makes perfect sense considering the cinematic weight many of the tracks carry. 

Closing act one is my personal standout track, Hard Times. Note-to-note this song is so delicately sung with poignant lyricism. Here, the character of Ethel confronts the sexual abuse she endured in childhood. It’s a lyrically disturbing track but bears testament to Hayden’s ability to deliver perceptive and artistically-inclined accounts of gritty, real-world trauma through her storytelling. 

Honing her southern influence, Thoroughfare is a near ten-minute country track, harmonicas and all. Ethel hits the road as she runs away from home, travelling to the west coast with Isaiah, who charms her along the way. 

Gibson Girl leans heavily into dark-pop, which is quite the switch-up off the back of Thoroughfare but it works! The descent of Ethel becomes prevalent at this point, as Isaiah’s true colours show. It’s my least favourite track on the album but it keeps the story ticking along.

Freaky doesn’t begin to describe it for Ptolemaea. Drugged by Isaiah, Ethel loses grip on reality. The production on this track is truly incredible. Its dizzying, droning buildup is disrupted by an explosion of metal-inspired madness. 

Next come a pair of instrumentals, which are two of the most cinematic tracks on the record, the latter of which is gorgeous. First up, August Underground – referencing the film of the same name – is a menacing piece, musically narrating Ethel accepting her fate at the hands of Isaiah. Hayden’s favourite track, Televangelism, follows, where ethereal and bright piano keys form the soundtrack of Ethel’s ascension to heaven. 

The penultimate track, Sun Bleached Flies, sees Ethel reflect on her life, the decisions she made, and the one she wanted all along – Willoughby. Hayden’s conflicted view on religion is explored in a very upfront manner on this track, and her philosophy is best summed up in the lyric “God loves you, but not enough to save you”. 

I don’t know how Ethel Cain managed to make a song about cannibalism astoundingly beautiful but she did. The closer, Strangers, depicts Ethel as a freezer bride, eventually being cannibalised by Isaiah. Ideas of self-worth and morality are brought to light through double entendres that are densely packed throughout the track. Listening to Strangers is pretty much a course in Songwriting 101. The second chorus is jaw-dropping, as tom drums lead up to a flurry of guitars reminiscent of traditional shoegaze. All hell breaks loose on the bridge, as the guitars build into a ferocious display of talent. This track is a spiritual journey in itself, nevermind the other 12 tracks.

I can’t speak highly enough of this project, whether that be its nuanced production or world-class songwriting. Preacher’s Daughter is the pinnacle of Ethel Cain’s story so far, but just the tip of the iceberg for what is yet to come. It’s not exactly official, but it’s fair to assume that Hayden will continue to explore the tragedy tormenting the women of the Cain family and make one hell of a career out of doing so.