With the sort of title you might expect to find on a Lana del Rey album, the new album by Tallahassee’s Hayden Silas Anhedönia, now 27, under the Ethel Cain moniker, is a lengthy, slow, moody, meandering, cinematic released of dark Americana, ambient and southern gothic, capturing a full spectrum of the lingering, sometimes overwhelming, flooding insecure emotions about being in love with the titular fictional character. Cain grew up in a strict, southern US Christian Baptist family with a musical upbringing of church music, chants and classical and came out as gay age 12, and became a transgender woman aged 20, and is also autistic, so brings an unsual mixture of experience to her work. She also released the album Perverts in January this year, but as with the acclaimed, autobiographical Preacher’s Daughter album of 2022, to which this album is described as a lyrical prequel (the action here is set as starting in 1986) Cain has a propensity for lengthy, drawn out sounds, from opener Janie all the way to closing piece Waco, Texas. It’s a listen that requires fully immersive patience, and is designed to capture the sinking and dizzying, sometimes helpless feelings of falling in love and confusion of desire. The slow-build Janie, refers to Cain’s childhood best friend, and the threatened feelings and rivalry emanating from her boyfriend, seeped in vividly sensual longing and vulnerability: “Hold me, smell of mildew / I wanna die in this room / I still shake/ Just by nature /Easy to hate, easy to blame/ Shoot me down/ Come on, hurt me / I'm wide open and deserving.” Willoughby’s Theme and Willoughby’s Interlude dominate the album with their slow arc of dark piano and shards of synths, with shades of a cinematic soundtrack that could colour a David Lynch film. This is also echoed in the single Nettles, for which Cain apparently hunted down the synths used by Lynch’s favourite composer Angelo Badalamenti for Twin Peaks and even bought them. Cain also plays banjo, guitars, and piano, with additional players on drums, electric guitar, fiddle, organ, and pedal steel guitar. It’s a rich tapestry of complex sound and emotions. The other single, Fuck Me Eyes, has a moody mix of shoegaze and mid-tempo synths, with echoes of Air and the soundtrack to The Virgin Suicides, with lyrics of confused feelings about blonde teenage girl who is provocative and promiscuous but who also goes to church: “She really gets around town in her old Cadillac / In her mom's jeans that she cut to really show off her ass / She's got her makeup done, and her high heels on / She's got her hair up to God, she's gonna get what she wants.” An album of many rooms, moments, emotions and images, deeply personal and mysterious, candid and yet undercover, this release is more of a companion piece to Preacher’s Daughter, but still has oodles of slow-bubbling potency. Out on Daughters of Cain Records.
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