Ethel Cain’s World Is Fictional—But It Feels Like Ours

On January 13th, 1991, a girl named Ethel was last seen at a Winn-Dixie parking lot. Unbeknownst to the world around her, she flees the south in search of the west. The story that follows, Preacher’s Daughter, is told through haunting vocals, slow instrumentation mirroring southern Christian baptism, and the aching hunger of wanting to know where Ethel’s story began, and where it will end.

‘Ethel’, however, cannot be mistaken as Ethel Cain, the visionary behind the critically acclaimed debut album. Centered around a fictional version of Ethel Cain, as told through the eyes of ‘Ethel’, Cain narrates the tale of a girl born to a preacher—one who suffocates under the weight of religion and the patriarchy of a small town, and is eventually murdered and cannibalized.

This story, from its bare bones, is uniquely specific. Preacher’s Daughter is an entire world of fictional characters, each charged with their own narratives. Lingering in between these stories lies the planted seed for Cain’s upcoming sophomore album: Willoughby Tucker, I Will Always Love You, releasing on August 8th. Unlike Cain’s debut work, this chapter will take a magnifying glass to Ethel’s teenage years—exploring her relationship with her young love, Willoughby Tucker, as explored within the Preacher's Daughter track, “House in Nebraska”.

Sitting at eight minutes, fans of Cain were greeted to nearly two minutes of pure instrumental music when Ethel Cain released “Nettles”, the lead single off the new project. “Gardenias on the tile—” she coos, “where it makes no difference who held back from who.” From a soft melody, the song crescendos into a triumphant declaration of nostalgic grief, where Ethel imagines a world with Willoughby. There is also Cain’s latest single, “Fuck Me Eyes,” which further expands the lore of her hometown as Ethel navigates her bitter jealousy over a girl named Holly. 

The narrative behind Cain’s music is extensive and deeply revered, and while I did not grow up in a southern town with a preacher father, or live with a cold mother—I do understand loneliness. Religion is familiar. I may never have gone west or fell in love in a ‘house in Nebraska’ but I have yearned to change the tune of chapters closed and relive faint memories. 

Ethel Cain’s genius lies in this specificity. 

When we’re grounded in an entire world full of characters that linger in between the lines of Ethel Cain’s prose, we’re furthered into the story, and presented with a mirror where we can see the best and worst of ourselves. These characters become part of our own narratives, and with time, and a lot of listening, we learn from these lessons. Between the mixture of Cain’s gothic tune, western pop, and specific use of synth, I am left with this: I may not have lived like Ethel, but I understand her deeply—and what feeling is greater than being understood?

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