By Danielle Chelosky
Listening to Ethel Cain’s songs can really feel imminent and intense, like being struck with a revelation or watching a large hurricane roll in. There’s a way that nothing would be the identical afterward. Hayden Silas Anhedönia — the eccentric artist who brings a rustic twang and a pointy, emo-rap edge to the indie-pop undertaking — has a knack for stretching ephemeral moments of awe into massive sensory experiences. She takes that to the subsequent stage with Preacher’s Daughter, which regardless of being her debut full-length, can’t be described as something however her opus. Over an hour lengthy, it’s as cinematic and visceral as a horror movie. The album focuses on a teenage runaway, an thought Anhedönia compares to Thelma & Louise as a result of it has an “all-American story vibe with some fables and proverbs alongside the way in which,” she says over Zoom a couple of month earlier than the discharge.
Anhedönia’s artwork is an advanced reckoning. The 24-year-old grew up in a non secular household in Florida. Her dad was a deacon, and she or he and her siblings have been homeschooled. She got here out as homosexual at age 12, left to dwell on her personal after turning 18, and commenced to just accept her id as a transgender lady round 20. The music she started making throughout this era of self-discovery turned her alienation into energy. Wicca Phase Springs Eternal — the emo-rap undertaking of Adam McIlwee, who based the music collective Goth Boi Clique that nurtured Lil Tracy and the late icon Lil Peep — stumbled upon her work and was instantly pulled in.
“I noticed Ethel’s identify on a Nicole Dollangager flyer in 2019 and determined to take heed to her music, most likely as a result of I assumed she had identify,” McIlwee shares by way of e mail. “I couldn’t imagine how mature of an artist she appeared at such an early stage in her profession — her voice and lyrics have been already excellent, and her branding and aesthetic already appeared to be absolutely shaped, which is so uncommon for an artist with solely a handful of songs.”
He launched her to fellow emo-rap prodigy Lil Aaron, who runs the label Hazheart Data, and he helped her out with releasing the music to a brand new viewers. Since then, she has launched two EPs, 2019’s Golden Age and final yr’s Inbred. Reverberating, spectral sounds and poetic lyricism imbued the collections with hypnotic atmospheres. Each featured two collaborators: Inbred invited Wicca Section onto the sprawling eight-minute monitor “God’s Nation” and Lil Aaron on the coruscating ballad “Michelle Pfeiffer.” After being laid off from her job at a nail salon on account of monetary hardships attributable to the pandemic, Anhedönia signed a file deal in August 2020 with Prescription Songs.
Within the midst of all this, Anhedönia was constructing Preacher’s Daughter, which options nobody however herself. “I began engaged on it after I was like 19,” she says. “It looks like ceaselessly in the past, however I might simply sort of work on it right here and there.” It’s set in 1991, when “my mother was the identical age that I’m now,” she explains. “I actually wished to discover ’90s nostalgia together with her and work my method again up by way of the a long time for the longer term albums as we return up the household tree.” This album is part of a trilogy that follows three generations of ladies, however chronologically it’s not the primary — it’s the final, centering on the youngest of the bunch. “I’ve at all times had a love for the ’90s regardless that I used to be barely current for it. All of the TVs in my home are previous field TVs. I solely watch VHS tapes and a few DVDs. I feel I’m simply completely caught up to now as a result of childhood is, you realize, the purest time of your life.”
Helen Kirbo“I bear in mind being a child and being very sheltered, very Christian, very closed off to the surface world. I bear in mind I might go to my grandparents’ home and see against the law present on TV or I might see a scandalous film poster on the facet of the Film Gallery,” she says. “We might drive by way of downtown and I bear in mind these little glimpses into the true world by way of this very sheltered bubble that I used to be in. They have been life-changing.” The Ethel Cain character is reclusive. Although she makes use of social media, her posts are cryptic and transient, by no means giving an excessive amount of of herself away. She refuses to maneuver to a metropolis, or actually wherever past the agricultural South; as we Zoom, she sits in her Alabama house, which she describes as “utterly remoted.” However she nonetheless fantasizes about disappearing much more: “I actually look ahead to constructing a home someplace out in the midst of nowhere, and I may not even put Wi-Fi in it,” she contemplates aloud.
This elusiveness heightens the affect of her music, lending the songs the feel of a prophecy. It brings to thoughts the resonance of Impartial Milk Resort’s 1998 masterwork Within the Aeroplane Over the Sea, which was more and more cult-followed and adored as bandleader Jeff Mangum, who’s additionally a masterful storyteller, went into hiding afterward. She is unafraid to carve out area in music for herself and go all in with what she creates. It isn’t the sort of music that’s straightforward to overlook. It lingers and haunts like a ghost. The sound is usually brooding and hallucinogenic; typically it’s flat-out scary, with bone-chilling instrumentals that sound like floating by way of the ether untethered, till Anhedönia’s shimmering vocals come again in as a guiding power. Different instances, like in “Solar Bleached Flies” or “American Teenager,” a blinding brightness soars by way of the songs amongst celebratory synths and bouncy rhythms. Epiphanies flicker inside vivid scenes and unbridled feelings whatever the sonic palette.
In grappling together with her Southern upbringing, she doesn’t hesitate to dig into the lows. Medicine, violence, and dying animate her lyrics, although not with out criticism. “I’ve been accused of being a white nationalist, racist, Republican, right-winger, redneck, the entire slew of it,” she says. However she is aware of her imaginative and prescient is heading in the right direction. “You’ve got a whole lot of backward-thinking, ignorant individuals within the South, that’s very true,” she admits. “However you even have among the most numerous cultures that by no means get any highlight. I’m not making an attempt to glorify the racist, violent elements of the South that it’s recognized for. I wish to inform the tales of people who find themselves affected by that, as a result of there are lots of people right here who don’t agree with that and don’t imagine in that and also you by no means actually hear about them.” She goals to dive into the “darkish facet of patriotism,” and the facility that the American dream holds over individuals even though it should possible “do nothing however get you killed, go away a gap in your loved ones, and put cash in [the government’s] pocket,” she says.
However the misunderstanding and misconstruing of her artwork are inevitable, solely contributing to her drive to get additional off the grid. She’s persevering with to develop, cultivating a loyal fanbase — or, extra precisely talking, stanbase — on Twitter. She is on the aforementioned Prescription Songs, the main label based by disgraced producer Dr. Luke, about which she has said: “I’m utterly oblivious to most issues within the business […] All I can say is I keep in my bubble and do my work.” Sacrifice was essential to deliver Preacher’s Daughter to life, although, judging by the music, it’s shocking that it wasn’t one thing extra intense and ritualistic like human sacrifice. But it surely has all been paying off.
“Every part has its execs and cons,” she expounds. “I’m very neurotic about my imaginative and prescient. I actually need it to be as near what I see in my head as potential. In any other case, you realize, why hassle making an attempt? I’m gonna go for what my unique imaginative and prescient was, and a whole lot of instances that requires some huge cash. And the one option to make some huge cash as an artist is to change into profitable. So I simply bit that bullet and was like, it’s going to be exhausting and it’s going to be annoying. But it surely’s all for the artwork.”
