Who is Ethel Cain?

Hayden Silas Anhedönia known professionally as Ethel Cain is an Alternative artist based out Tallahassee, Florida born in 1998. That’s the most simple answer to that question. Hayden has released 4 EP’s and 2 Full Length LP’s under the moniker of Ethel Cain since her debut in February 2021. Her lyrics take on themes of family trauma, death, young love and southern America as a whole.

What separates Ethel Cain from her peers is that she is unafraid to expand her sonic palette and uses her music as a vessel to create stories that span across years. Her debut album titles ‘Preacher’s Daughter‘ released in 2022, follow the character of Ethel Cain from her hometown and young love with fling Willoughby Tucker (who becomes a more important character later on) to her untimely demise at the hands of a man whom she meets in Texas and takes her on a road trip across the country only to kill her and eat her.

Preacher’s Daughter is what really sky-rocketed Hayden into the forefront of the alternative scene, as listeners took to her intimate instrumentals and profound lyrics. On songs like the 8 minute epic ‘House in Nebraska’ she sings about a love lost to time and stress and reflects on her past and present in the anthemic pop hit ‘American Teenager’. The album’s closer ‘Strangers’ is written as Ethel’s goodbye to the world wishing her mom the best and asks the man who killed if she’s making him feel sick as he eats her.

In-between the release of her first LP and second, Hayden released an experimental, hour and a half long ambient drone EP titled ‘Perverts‘. This release is separate from the main story of Ethel Cain, however sonic influences heard on this album are expanded in her second LP. Perverts uses little words to get it’s point across, with only 3 of the 9 songs on the project having real lyrics, while the rest of the songs are all either ambient or use spoken word.

Hayden’s most recent release came out this summer and was titled ‘Willoughby Tucker, I’ll Always Love You‘ and is a prequel to the 2022 release Preacher’s Daughter. This album gives us more insight into the relationship with Willoughby, who Ethel is in love with and is the subject of the song House In Nebraska. In this LP, Hayden writes about Ethel’s insecurities about said relationship and reflect on the people in her town and how she feels generationally cursed by her family tree. This album also includes a couple instrumental tracks, heavily inspired by the work done on the previous above mentioned EP.

Now that Ethel’s story has come to a close, what is next for the story? Hayden has come out and said she is planning out two more albums around Ethel and her family which will be called ‘Preacher’s Wife’ and ‘Mother of a Preacher’ both of which fans are eagerly awaiting. She also plans on releasing a trilogy of books to go even further into the story of these characters fans have grown to love.

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