‘Preacher’s Daughter’ - How Ethel Cain shines a light on America’s underbelly

My first introduction to Hayden Anhedönia, who is better known by her stage name Ethel Cain, was the hazy, slightly blurred album cover of a girl in a white dress sitting at a small coffee table below a picture of Jesus Christ within a house that has seemingly not been touched since the late 1970s. Before even listening to a single song off the album, Preacher’s Daughter by Ethel Cain had me both terrified and intrigued to learn more about her sound and her story.

Ethel Cain’s Preacher’s Daughter is a tale of a girl blinded in hope and optimism by a deeply religious America that has shown her what an ideal “American Dream” can look like. However, as we listen to the story, we soon discover that this "dream" presented to Cain is far from being realized. The story is shadowed by themes of queer womanhood, religious trauma, and familial conflict all set against the backdrop of the deep south of the United States.

Starting the album, Cain does a fantastic job of giving listeners a false sense of hope (which she also happens to be experiencing herself). After listening to the opening song, “Family Tree (Intro),” which does set an uneasy stage as Cain sings about not being able to escape the circumstances your family has put you in through biblical analogy, we dive right into “American Teenager.” This song is widely considered her most popular, and for good reason. “American Teenager” is an indie pop dream for those who only want to dip their toes in what is known as the Ethel Cain lore. Blended with nostalgic guitar riffs and a catchy upbeat melody (that even Barack Obama had included in his top songs of 2022), the song makes you want to get into a car and drive 100mph down a freeway with the wind in your hair. But if we take a closer listen, we find out that the song reveals to have a more depressing undertone hidden away by a glittery production, which one can argue, is what the American Dream is, right? In “American Teenager,” Ethel depicts kids coming home from war in coffins and getting drunk at Sunday services, all while dreaming of whatever America has promised them under the yellow lights of a high school football field.

As we progress through the album, we find that Ethel Cain continues to struggle with the hand she’s been dealt. We move through the first act with songs like “A House In Nebraska” and “Western Nights,” which give us 6-7 minute long heartfelt piano ballads where Ethel laments on past lovers. “A House In Nebraska” in particular, is Ethel recalling the good memories she shared with a past lover who has seemingly left her and the town the two of them grew up in as adolescents. On the other hand, “Western Nights” details a new and darker relationship Ethel endures later on. She entangles herself with a lover who is both physically and sexually abusive to her and yet, Ethel is still madly in love with him even with all the blaring red flags that surround him. Although it’s sad, we begin to realize that Ethel’s constant optimism, hope, and trust she places in others will soon land her in the wrong hands as she travels across the southern belt of America in search of a life away from where she grew up in Alabama. The betrayals she faces throughout the album do not exclude her family members, as Ethel reveals in the song “Hard Times” that she has been enduring abuse from her father for years. In my personal opinion, “Hard Times” is one of the hardest songs on this album to swallow.

We begin to move into the transitionary part of the album, which separates the story from the dark and the darker. In the song "Thoroughfare," Ethel Cain is on the run from the crimes she committed with her past lover back in Alabama while simultaneously searching for something new in her life. She meets someone else on the road out west with whom she immediately, and mistakenly, falls in love. The 9-minute song is met with tambourines, harmonicas, varying sets of drums, and a good ‘ol guitar. It’s the last song of the first act of the album and, essentially, the last glimmer of hope Ethel experiences before things take a turn for the worst.

Moving further out west and sleeping around in various motel rooms, Ethel’s current lover (who we were introduced to in “Thoroughfare”) becomes an all too familiar abusive boyfriend, who also happens to begin feeding her drugs and trafficking her around as we can hear in the song “Gibson Girl.” Upon initial listen, the song is sultry and slow-paced with elongated guitar riffs accompanied by reverberated vocals. However, upon closer inspection of the lyrics, it becomes evident that Ethel is in serious distress and danger, making it difficult to enjoy the song's sexual appeal. One might feel guilty for even nodding their head to the song when finding out the true meaning of it.

As if we didn’t think things could get worse for Ethel, we soon realize that the man she’s been with since her departure to the west has been planning to kill her this whole time, which we find out through both “Ptolemaea” and the instrumental track “August Underground,” fittingly named after the infamous early 2000s snuff film. Particularly in “Ptolemaea,” Ethel makes sure we hear her visceral, blood-curdling screams during her final moments of life, which are jarring and one of the most intense moments on the entire record, to say the least.

Following her demise, we find Ethel in a state of reflection on her life and contemplating whether she had lived up to the standards that others had held for her in the songs “Sun Bleached Flies” and “Strangers.” My personal favorite from the album, “Sun Bleached Flies,” describes the rocky relationship she had with her religious upbringing and the different ways she had to deal with her surroundings as a queer woman. The song arguably has Ethel’s most famous line, “God loves you, but not enough to save you,” which essentially describes what the whole album was about. Being told by a community of people that an all-knowing God loves you but simultaneously hates your existence, is something that many marginalized groups under a major religion are all too familiar with. Ethel’s vocal delivery in this song is absolute perfection. You can practically feel every word she sings from deep within her diaphram as if she had been holding in these feelings up until this very moment, where the song explodes into a cacophony of instruments and harmonies singing “if it’s meant to be, then it will be,” essentially releasing every burden in her life and choosing to move forward in light.

In true Ethel Cain fashion, she manages to give listeners one last shock, when she takes us back to the scene of her murder in the album closer “Strangers,” where we find out that her lover has cut her into pieces and has cannibalized her. One line from this song that oddly made me chuckle was when she said, “How funny, I never considered myself tough,” giving us a double entendre of being both emotionally tough and physically tough to chew on. She ends the album by addressing her mother from beyond the grave, simply telling her that she loves her and that she’ll see her when her mother inevitably “gets here.”

Preacher’s Daughter has fascinated me ever since discovering the record. Ethel Cain has not only captured such a unique Americana experience that hasn’t been deeply explored as much as others, but she also manages to perfectly translate this experience into beautiful music and intricate stories. For so many, the promise of the “American Dream” falls short and they die still believing the pretense that was fed to them by their forefathers. For me, listening to this album was a personal form of catharsis. It allowed me to look introspectively and evaluate the relationship I have with myself, my religion, and my loved ones. It also made me question so much about my own life, what the meaning of it is, and how I’d like to look back on it. This album is not for everyone, but it certainly is worth a listen for those who appreciate true artistry and storytelling.