Preacher’s Daughter
Ethel Cain tells her story from beyond the grave in Preacher’s Daughter. A swirl of glam rock, gospel, folk, country, dark R&B and pop, and experimental that conjures illusions of nostalgia, exhilaration and unsettledness that liken to telling ghost stores around a campfire. Preacher’s Daughter is a pending American Gothic classic.
Trigger warning: This article contains topics of sexual assault, violence and murder.
Preacher’s Daughter is a bold yet flawlessly executed debut album by Ethel Cain (real name Hayden Silas Anhedönia). It is a conceptual body of work “centred around the character Ethel Cain, who runs away from home only to meet a gruesome end at the hands of a cannibalistic psychopath.”
A couple of things before I dive into it that immediately caught my attention:
This is an extremely intentional and well-curated album that I can so clearly tell had an unwavering vision. It doesn’t feel rushed and no song feels like a filler – they all serve as necessary chapters to most effectively tell the story. And with such ponderous topics like religion, rebellion, anarchy, violence and psychopathy anchoring this story, it needs this level of detail.
Preacher’s Daughter so blatantly disregards all the New Age rules of releasing music – short, quick, hope-to-be viral singles that don’t really mesh together. This album consists of 13 tracks (symbolic of immorality, rebellion and lawlessness in Biblical terms), and several of them are over 5 minutes long. In this day and age, that’s practically unheard of. It’s an entire narrative that explores the depths of the human condition.
The opening track Family Tree (Intro) is the most epic introduction to an album that so perfectly previews what follows. It ropes in all the themes (religion, rebellion, death, intergenerational trauma etc.) as well as the musical genres. She sings, “The fate’s already fucked me sideways, swinging by my neck from the family tree”, insinuating Ethel is telling her story from the grave. It provokes a flood of questions: What happened to her? Where is she? What’s her story?
The next track, American Teenager, frankly, took me by surprise. Based on Family Tree (Intro), I thought the next track would be as dark and insidious. But this record is a nostalgic pop-rock track that strongly reminds me of the 90s and would fit perfectly at the end of a high school rom com. It exudes innocence and coming of age, vividly depicting the archetypal experience of a young girl exploring, questioning and succumbing to her curiosity. She sings, “Jesus, if you’re there, why do I feel alone in this room with you?” It’s a great way to reel us in – the questioning of God and religion is relatable and universal, and I can strongly identify with Ethel, having had similar questions myself. That’s what makes the story that much more tragic. I realise I am Ethel. My girlfriends are Ethel. My mother was Ethel. Ethel represents girlhood.
The next track, A House In Nebraska, is where the mood shifts. Her voice is noticeably deeper as it weaves through monstrously heavy piano chords that echo throughout. You can feel her burdens growing heavier and more tiresome as she matures into a woman. Religious tyranny, hypocritical Biblical teachings, parental disharmony, and an infatuation with a boy named Willoughby Tucker are weighing her down. She sounds more introspective (“these dirt roads are empty, the ones we paved ourselves”) and longs for the abandoned house in Nebraska where Willoughby and her would go.
With each passing track, it gets darker and more morbid. Hard Times, a folk song encompassed by nature noises from the wilderness, addresses what I suspected: the sexual abuse she endured from her father, leading to her complex feelings towards not only him but men in general. In the blues-country track Thoroughfare, she details in over nine minutes her meeting with the older Isaiah (her future killer). The over two-minute-long outro is sensational – her voice scoops and lightly yodels over a swinging guitar to symbolise what I interpret to be an immense erotic attraction to Isaiah and the new life he can give to her. Isaiah is her escape, and he whisks her away to California. The dark R&B track that follows, Gibson Girl, alludes to the dangers Isaiah imposes upon Ethel, such as pimping and drugging. The beat reminds me so much of The Weeknd, with raging synths and her voice coated in autotune. It’s such a thoughtful way to indicate to the listener that we’re no longer in Nebraska. We’re in the city, far from home.
We reach peak darkness with Ptolemaea, a name derived from the circle of Hell in which betrayal resides called Ptolemea. “What fear a man like you brings upon a woman like me” she murmurs. “Stop, stop, stop, stop.” I’m of two minds about this song: do I take the lyrics literally or is it representative of one of her drug-induced hallucinations? Either way, she confronts a consuming and disturbing darkness that ultimately leads to her tragic fate. Musically, it’s extremely experimental and avant-garde. Her voice morphs into an instrument of its own and integrates so seamlessly into the overall beat. It’s like we’re in her head and we can hear her inner thoughts. It’s a swirling concoction of anxieties, traumas and fears.
The second last track, Sun Bleached Flies is from the perspective of Ethel in Heaven. She reflects on her life, her father, family and the love of her life Willoughby. I believe she makes peace with her untimely death, connoted by the E major key and her higher registered voice, much like how she began the album with American Teenager. I do, think, though, she has questions for God. Why did He take her so soon? Why did He put her through so much pain? “God loves you, but not enough to save you. So, baby girl, good luck taking care of yourself.”
In the ironically-titled closing track Strangers, she bids farewell to her mother. It is clear throughout Preacher’s Daughter that Ethel loved her mother and learned a lot from her, so it’s unsurprising that she’s on Ethel’s mind, even in death.
“Mama, just know that I love you, and I’ll see you when you get here.”
Ethel sounds much younger and more spirited as she sings over quite a neutral and generic guitar. That is not to say that the instrumentation is underwhelming – quite the contrary. It is deliberately generic to delineate Ethel’s neutral state in death and in the afterlife. She is peaceful.
Preacher’s Daughter is one of the most impressive and impactful bodies of work I’ve ever listened to. It is so meticulously crafted to not only tell an extreme, captivating story through a smooth blend of music genres, but also provides a social commentary. Ethel, a young religious girl who meets a terrible fate, can also be interpreted as a metaphor of the loss of innocence in girlhood. Because of societal and systemic barriers, we are robbed of so much, such as hope, goodness, innocence, naivety. It’s rare that girls grow up to be women unscathed – we all are burdened with varying degrees of issues and trauma that we have to carry and then navigate a life with. We are all daughters and no matter our differences, we are united in her experience of being girls and growing into women. Ethel is so wonderfully preaching to the converted.