Ethel Cain
Daughters of Cain Records, 2022
Hitting me personally on many levels is Ethel Cain’s play for glory, 2022’s Preacher’s Daughter. Such a slow-burning monster it has become, that artist Hayden Anhedönia (aka Ethel Cain) has had to forcibly repel her new audience with this year’s Perverts. Not quite reaching the Lou Reed Metal Machine Music heights of alienation and disdain, Perverts is an aggressive and confronting listen and natural successor to the devastating beauty of its predecessor. Preacher’s Daughter seduces with sunny melodies and early 1990s’ optimistic Cranberries rhythms – and then flat out punches you in the face with its lyrics. Thankfully, this is fiction.
Set in Alabama, circa 1991, Ethel Cain the character narrates a classic disaffected young woman, scarred by religion, incest and alcohol and her inevitable escape into the arms of a monster. Then the arc gets so much worse. But the music on which the vividly painful lyrics float is so perfect in capturing mood and painting in atmosphere, it is impossible to avoid being swept along into Cain’s void.
Living in the US state next door at the time this is set, it feels like I knew these characters and their inevitable descent into Southern Gothic catastrophe. “American Teenager” captures 1990 Gulf War-perplexed enthusiasm perfectly. I know this mood, I was there. It was weird. Observing that the dead (boy next door) made their choices, so maybe deserved their fate, haunts the entirety of the narrative and Cain’s fate is sealed from that moment. Every song impacts with profundity. The dense reverb washes and endless piano-sustain track make this a sonic cathedral.
Rewarding the bravest of listeners, bring the tissues if you’re hanging in for the ride.
GET THIS: Catastrophic narrative, delivered with unimaginable beauty
