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8 January 2025

Ethel Cain’s American Gothic

The singer found fame with her debut album in 2022 – but Perverts, a subversive horror movie of a record, shows she is uninterested in courting it.

By Emily Bootle

If you want to make it big as a musician today, there are several criteria you might try to meet. A clearly defined aesthetic. A readiness to become an “icon”. And songs easily truncated for social media posts, preferably with references to the zeitgeist or memorable lyrics that can themselves help to shape it.

Ethel Cain certainly meets the first two. The 26-year-old American singer-songwriter, whose real name is Hayden Anhedönia, broke through in 2022 with her debut album, Preacher’s Daughter, a concept record centred on a fictional woman – the character of Ethel, who Anhedönia says “possessed” her – who is making sense of her past as the abused daughter of a small-town pastor and navigating a love affair with the evil Isaiah. With flowing dark hair and sharp features, her vibe is heavy on the Southern Gothic: laced corsets, Bible references and exorcisms evoking an expansive, dusty and totally absorbing Americana. The songs blend 1990s grunge with doom metal, bedroom pop and sad-girl poetry; thick with nostalgia and intrigue, they speak directly to an online generation while showing a deft songwriting ability worthy of old-school critical respect. Cain grew up online, and was already gaining a fandom there by the time she released the album, which followed three self-released EPs. When she released Preacher’s Daughter, it became an instant cult classic.

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