Fucking hell, first today I have to write about a black kid born into Jim Crow Alabama (like, literally Jim Crow, not just modern Alabama, which may still be accurately described as ‘Jim Crow Alabama’), now I get to Hayden Anhedönia, raised in one of those creepy Southern Baptist communities (Hayden was literally the preacher/dean’s son, and when their Daddy would visit they’d come along, while Mummy sung in the choir) and was home schooled. Home schooled!! You know that they’re fucked up. Why am I covering all of America’s weird and traumatic – but always buttressed by religious belief – traditions today?? Oh, and before you ask: no, there isn’t a song here as good as Olivia Rodrigo’s ballad of a homeschooled girl, so let’s nip that in the bud straight away.
I talked to this hot guy, swore I was his type
Guess that he was makin’ out with boys, like the whole night
I don’t get religious people. Hayden told their Mum that they liked boys when they were 12 and, yeah, I get how religious people don’t like unrepressed homosexuality (“I was the spawn of Satan to most people. The first person who told me that I wasn’t going to hell when I died was my therapist that my parents forced me to get when I was 16.”). Hayden left the family home aged 18, shaved their head for a while to try and be as masculine as possible (““I’m going to be a boy, and my family is going to love me, and I’m going to make them proud”), but that didn’t last long. On their 20th birthday, they came out as trans. What I don’t get is… Won’t their family accept them back now?? I get how they need to repress homosexuality – that’s kind of their ‘thing’ and it would be culturally insensitive for me to criticise that – but now Hayden is a woman who likes boys! They’ve come back around the other side! They’re straight again! Show me the part in the bible that disproves what I’m saying, you bunch of freaks. Didn’t Jesus come out of that cave three days after being crucified dressed as Trinity from The Matrix while praising the positive effects of their recent top surgery? Dude, look at that gorgeous flowing hair! You’re telling me a cis guy takes that much care over their hair routine?? Also, a carpenter?? So obviously a lesbian.
Whatever, it was around this time that Hayden started making music as Ethel Cain. ‘Ethel Cain’ is kind of a character, in the sense that they’re pretty much Hayden – running away from an oppressive church upbringing – except that they can tell stories about being murdered and then cannibalised. ‘Preacher’s Daughter’ took around four years to complete, and you’ll be shocked that it was completed that quickly when you listen to how epic, layered, lush and striking it is. They’re smart enough to lead the listener in with gorgeous pop like American Teenager, only to bombard them with six minute doom rock epics once their here. If it suits the narrative, of course. Lana Del Ray is obviously an influence, but while Lana is all “God bless America, I’m a 1950s pinup with a barbiturates addiction”, Cain is far more interested in ripping open the very corpse of the ‘American Dream’ and spitting in the open cavity. Then spend four years working on that corpse until it looks just right. And here we are, with a decaying corpse beautifully harnessed with glitter and euphoric guitar solos. But they could never remove that stench. It’s a laudable, brutal achievement, which is impossible not to be dragged along by. With your feet tied to the exhaust of a Harvey Davidson, the tarmac scraping off your skin. Metal as fuck, yeah?
This album was actually released around 18 months ago, but there’s only two top ten albums not actually released in the December 2022 – November 2023 qualification period, honest! There were a handful of records that I completely missed in 2022 that I began 2023 considering for a belated place on this year’s list. Carly Rae Jaap Stam, Coco & Clair Clair, Jockstrap… But I’m always biased against not including them, as I don’t want to damage the highly trusted and legitimate reputation of this list* by including albums from the year before. Also, that’d be like admitting that I didn’t listen to literally every record released between 22.12.01 and 23.11.30. Which I obviously did. Just some albums I might have decided not to list. Ethel Cain’s 76 minute beast of a debut album was not going to be added to that list. There was one spectacular song that would obviously find a place on the Legit Bosses, but I otherwise had to put the album away. See you on that second album, Ethel. Oh sure, I’d been a fan from the start, but I think Ethel really hits it with this sophomore release. I’d Google some negative reviews of ‘Preacher’s Daughter’ (which would be difficult to find) and claim the slightly less favourable views were my own. You know how I be. Basically, I didn’t want to admit taking longer than Barack fucking Obama to get into them.
(*this blog isn’t called** ‘The Most Trusted Voice on Music’ for nothing, you know?!
**by me)
But, fuck-a-doodle-fucking-do, this album’s incredible. The commercial highs are some of the best country/goth/pop/folk songs you’re likely to hear, but the drones, man! The drones! It’s a sonic marvel with all sorts of insane experimentations in musical delivery, while also managing to be both musically and thematically cohesive in a way that’s simply startling on a debut album. Yeah, it is a bit too long (I started playing it in the background when I started writing/researching for this piece and it still hasn’t finished!!), but I truly feel that it’s long in the way that the King James bible is long: sure, there might be bits that you missed on the first read, but it just means that there’s so much there that new verses will keep revealing themselves to you. Oh! I didn’t know coconuts were a sin! And Jesus was mad into pegging! Amazing track after amazing track would keep poking their head up whenever I was listening to all 2023 music on shuffle and… I couldn’t deny it any longer. ‘Preacher’s Daughter’ was a late official entry onto NE2023, and it was straight into the top ten with a bullet.
Of course, not only am I even slower on the uptake than the Deporter-in-Chief, but I’ve kind of missed all the good parts of Ethel Cain fandom. It was once apparently a thriving online community, with Ethel themselves often playing up to their ubergoth characterisation by retweeting memes that her fandom made and sharing silly shit to her 300k Instagram followers. She deleted all of her social media, and ended up fainting onstage. “Don’t get me wrong, laughter and memes and jokes are always really fun. But when you want to post something to be consumed seriously, people are still joking – and then you get like, thousands of comments that are like, ‘silly goose’. All of a sudden, you start to feel like you can’t turn off the memeable internet personality thing”. Nooooooooo! I missed the entire ‘memeable internet personality thing’! I just got into you because the music was fucking undeniable!! Bollocks. Looks like me and Obama will have to make our own entertainment. Hey, Barry, fancy ordering a drone strike on innocent civilians in Pakistan? That always used to cheer you up. No? Yemen? Somalia? What if I promise that the strike will kill at least a dozen children under the age of five? Yeeeeeah! There’s that smile!
Necessary Evil 
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