by Abby Truman   

Twenty-four year-old Ethel Cain released her debut album, Preacher’s Daughter, in May of 2022.  An album that takes a much darker look at the American dream, Preacher’s Daughter is full of ethereal vocals, a mix of alternative and electronic influence, and the essence of the South.  However, before I dive into the knitty-gritty, I’d like to give a little background on Cain herself.  First and foremost, Ethel Cain doesn’t exist.  Infact, Ethel Cain is an alter ego of one Hayden Silas Anhendönia, a Florida native who has been writing and producing all of her own music under several pseudonyms since 2017.  Anhendönia grew up in rural Florida where everything felt about a decade behind the rest of the world and the entire town attended church on Sunday.  The album is heavily influenced by where Anhendönia grew up, she wanted the album to convey the feeling of community, but also the suffocation that comes with it.  Anhendönia has a deep love for her childhood and where she grew up, but there was that feeling that comes with being from a small town that plagued her for years.  She had a feeling of community, but was stuck in a town that expected her to be something that she could not.  Despite being compared to Lana del Rey, Anhendönia wanted to show a “realer” side of the American dream, one that isn’t so dressed up in glitz and glamor, but one that is more gritty and real, thus Preacher’s Daughter was born.

    Preacher’s Daughter is about Anhendönia’s alter ego, Ethel Cain.  Much like Anhendönia, Cain is a preacher’s daughter in a small town of Alabama.  In the four years it took Anhendönia to write Preacher’s Daughter, she used Cain as a way to work through her feelings of suffocation in a small town and complex feelings she has towards God and religion.  Cain is forced into this false sense of purity that comes from being a preacher’s kid, an expectation she never felt she could live up to, a feeling that Anhendönia is no stranger to.  Cain was a way for Anhendönia to romanticize her life and all her experiences in an effort to convince herself that all her suffering wasn’t for nothing.  Cain’s story is an American epic about a girl struggling to reach the American dream that dances the line of just mundane enough to be possible but melodramatic enough to be fantastical.

    Now for the knitty-gritty.  Preacher’s Daughter contains thirteen tracks about the life, and eventual death, of one Ethel Cain.  Since the album is so long, it can be split into two acts; Act I which consists of songs “Family Tree (Intro)” to “Hard Times'' and Act II which consists of songs “Thoroughfare” to “Strangers.”  Act I is much more put together sound-wise and made up of shorter, pop-like songs while Act II has a much more desperate and sporadic sound that is full of longer ballads.  Anhendönia wants you to lose hope and devolve into madness along with Cain.  Cain produces all her songs and this devolution of sound is very intentional in this album. Even though the album itself has a very gritty sound, Cain wants you to experience the descent into hopelessness with her.  Anhendönia wanted to reel audiences in, giving them a false sense of hope that comes along with the lighter, poppy-er songs at the beginning of Preacher’s Daughter, and crushing them only after they find out it is too late to leave.  As much as I would love to do a deep dive into each song, I will keep my analysis fairly surface level so you can experience the album for yourself.

     Starting off with Act I, we set a tone of hope but also longing.  With songs like “American Teenager” we see how Cain is determined to live her dream outside of her hometown and experience all the ups and downs promised to us as teens.  In this song in particular, the phrase “It’s just not my year/But I’m all good out here” implies that Cain believes that her life will get better.  As we continue through the album we learn more about Cain’s past lover’s specifically in “A House in Nebraska” and “Western Nights.”  “A House in Nebraska” is about a long lost love that skipped town long ago.  Anhendönia actually attributes the entire album to this song, saying that this is the first song she wrote for the album and built it from there.  This song is incredibly personal to Anhendönia because she talks about her fantasy of running off to Nebraska, the center of America, with the love of her life and living in heaven on Earth, completely isolated from the outside world.  However, the lover in “A House in Nebraska” is long gone and Cain is left by herself until she meets a not-so-kind lover in “Western Nights.”  In “Western Nights” Cain dives into how we find comfort in sadness and abuse because it’s familiar.  She is devoted to a man who abuses her but she can’t leave him.  Eventually in “Family Tree” he is killed by the police, leaving Cain to run from the police and reflect on her past.  Part of this reflection is shown in “Hard Times” which highlights the abuse Cain endured from her father.  By the end of Act I, we have a better understanding of our main character, Cain, and why she behaves the way that she does.  We can see how she feels haunted in her hometown and despite her hope that her life will get better, all it does is continue to get worse.

    Act II is started by “Thoroughfare,” marking Cain’s escape from her hometown.  In this song Cain is traveling across America, which Anhendönia has said was her dream at the time.  However, this story doesn’t have a happy ending with a girl finally realizing her dream, instead Cain meets a man on her way to California.  The next song “Gibson Girl” is incredibly personal to Anhendönia and heart-breakingly relatable.  “Gibson Girl” is about how Cain comes to the realization that she is not in control with men the way she likes to think.  Even though she feels as if she comes off very dominating in situations with men, she realizes that this is a false perception and the song devolves into the question of is she a man eater or being eaten?  In Cain’s case, it’s the latter.  While in California, Cain suffers more abuse at the hands of her new lover and finds herself stripping and being pumped full of drugs.  Finally we reach “Ptolomea.” This song is the climax of the album, signifying Cain’s realization that there is no turning back.  She has disillusioned herself into chasing a dream that doesn’t exist and now she is left hopeless  with nothing but addiction and abuse.  Even though there has been a gradual descent into grittier sounds the further we get from Act I, it isn’t really noticeable until we get to “Ptolomea.” The way that Cain sings the lyrics makes the listener understand that at this point, she has lost all hope.  There is nothing left for her and she discovers the true nature of her lover – a cannibalistic sociopath.  This is then followed by “August Underground,” one of the more experimental songs on the album.  There are no real lyrics, just Cain moaning as she makes one last feeble attempt to escape her fate as her lover’s next meal.  The song ends with a ringing gunshot, signifying Cain’s death. After trying to escape him in “August Underground,” Cain is then killed and  “Televangelism '' tells of her acceptance of death.  “Televangelism” is the first time in a long time that I have listened to an instrumental song that has brought me close to tears.  The sound is truly ethereal and you can feel the raw, human fear and awe of a new place give way to realization and finally acceptence.  The last two songs are right after Cain’s death and lamenting the end of her life.  In “Sun Bleached Flies” Cain reflects on her past and mourns the fact that no one could save her, not even God, but she forgives those who have wronged her.  However, we get a slightly different tone in “Strangers” where Cain is cannibalized by her lover from California and is almost vengeful in asking, asking “Am I making you feel sick?” to her killer.  Even though Cain has forgiven those who have wronged her, it is not lost on her that she did not deserve this.  Act II sees a complete disintegration of Cain’s hope in the American dream.  She is lost and alone and eventually eaten by a man that she trusted.   Despite Preacher’s Daughter being an incredibly dark album, I feel like there is something in Cain that we can all relate to.  Whether that suffocation of expectations put on us, the feeling that we were meant for more, traumatic experiences, a false sense of control over our lives, or a desperate need to be seen.  Anhendönia wanted to tell a gritty story of the American dream and she absolutely delivered. Even though Ethel Cain is dead, Anhendönia still plans on performing under her name and promises more projects to come focusing on the Cain family.

Listen to Ethel Cain and more on KANM.org, the college station of College Station