Album Review: Preacher's Daughter (by Ethel Cain)

An up-front note from the author: this post reviews an album that features themes of violence, sexual abuse, murder, cannibalism. 

Those are distressing and it's valid if this post isn't the right post for you to read. Please remember to take care of yourselves.

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"This music makes me cry. It sounds just like my soul."- Grimes, California

Spotify Wrapped does this thing where it tells you what kind of music listener you are based on all of the data it collects about you when you stream music. Honestly, it's kind of dystopian, but I will admit it was fun to see how Spotify would describe me.

Spotify, with all of its data, and in ways that humans can't, can perceive me. And is there anything more existentially terrifying than being perceived?

What this rightfully perceives is that I have a tendency to fixate on an album from an artist for an intense month-ish long love affair. I will play the album continuously, and almost nothing else. I will look up the lyrics and play lit prof by trying to decipher them. I will sing parts of the album to myself when I'm alone in my office. I will lay in my bean bag and close my eyes and let my mind wander to the album. And when it wears out, I will do the same with a different album.

My hyper-fixations always speak profound truths to me. Carly Rae Jepsen's The Loneliest Time reminded me that I have to be brave enough to feel everything- even the bad stuff. SOS by SZA reminded me that it's ok to be a dramatic sad girl, that I don’t need to turn that part of myself off to be loved. Surrender by Maggie Rogers reminded me that love is a triumph.

My current hyper-fixation is Preacher's Daughter by Ethel Cain.

Music heads love to bemoan the fall of the album- that album making is an artistic concept that we are losing to the rise of single streaming. I love having the ability to just stream singles, but I don’t disagree with the music heads. In the same way that an author must carefully curate a novel, an artist must carefully curate an album.

Preacher’s Daughter is one of the most beautiful kinds of albums, a concept album. It sounds like if Faulkner, or some other master of Southern Gothic literature, formed a rock band led by a girl with the voice of an angel and a guitarist who can SHRED. It is a baroque, epic tragedy.

On the surface, it is evident to the listener what is happening in this concept album. The eponymous preacher's daughter grows up in a small Southern town where her dad is the local preacher. He dies, and she inherits his congregation. (Family Tree, American Teenager). Preacher's daughter drinks too much, and it's revealed that she's coping with the loss of a boyfriend who she clearly loved immensely and the effects of abuse perpetrated by her father. (American Teenager, A House in Nebraska, Hard Times). She begins to question her faith. She asks God why she feels so alone if He is omnipotent.

About a third of the way through the album, preacher's daughter runs away from home. She escapes her small Southern town with a violent, troubled man. (Western Nights). As she escapes with this violent, troubled man, preacher's daughter herself becomes violent and more troubled (Family Tree). In Thoroughfare, preacher's daughter links up with a different man while she's hitchhiking in Texas. She's hesitant to even get in this dude's truck but she has literally nothing else going on at the moment. They drive in his truck to California and talk about love and their pasts. They fall in love, or something like it.

In Gibson Girl, preacher's daughter is turning tricks. She's hooked on some unknown addictive substance. The johns are physically violent. Everything is dark and scary. The bass is heavy.

In an album that includes physical violence, and familial sexual abuse, Ptolemaea is the most frightening track. From the jump, it starts with a voice that we don't recognize as belonging to preacher's daughter. Some people online think it's a man's voice. Some people say it's Ethel Cain's voice just distorted. The effect is jarring. Preacher's daughter has been narrating this tale for the 8 previous tracks- who is this man? And why is he uttering terrifying bits of dialogue. Is he a man? Is he the devil himself?

I was listening to this track for the first time, home alone in my bean bag, with my eyes closed, and a glass of red for dinner, and I was so jarred by this unknown man's voice that I actually thought for a few terrifying seconds that an unknown man was in my home, uttering terrifying bits of dialogue to me.

As the track crescendos, preacher's daughter repeats the word stop several times, she's pleading, before finally screaming it as all the instruments kick in. Something terrible and catastrophic has happened.

The next track, August Underground has no lyrics. It's all instruments and distortion pedal and Ethel vocalizing. It feels cold, and strange, and irreversible.

Televangelism follows, and it's a mellower, sweeter piano ditty with an old-timey classic kind of sound that distorts like a record on an old player at the end. There are no words, and yet, I get it somehow.

The penultimate track is Sun Bleached Flies. Like Televangelism, it's a piano ditty. Preacher's daughter embraces fate, whatever that is. She accepts that God, despite her prayers, won't save her, that no one is coming to save her. And as the track outros, preacher's daughter gives us my favorite lines of the album.

"I'm still praying for that house in Nebraska/ By the highway out on the edge of town/ Dancing with the windows open/ I can't let go when something's broken/ It's all I know and it's all I want now"

Preacher's Daughter ends with Strangers. Narratively, preacher's daughter is literally describing being in a freezer in a basement, and being consumed (!!!) by a man who she has complicated feelings for (!!??). She thinks of where she started and where she's been. She thinks of her mother, seeing her missing photo on the side of a milk carton in a Winn-Dixie. Preacher's daughter closes the album by telling her mother "just know that I love you, and I'll see you when you get here".

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After listening to the album, I immediately went to genius dot com to research the lyrics. Here's what I was able to gather from the Ethel Cain fans on the internet--- Narratively, the album describes preacher's daughter's life in her small southern home town. (Family Tree, American Teenager). Preacher's daughter, drowning her heartbreak for her ex, and coping with the sexual abuse perpetrated by her father, turns to drink. She begins to question her faith. (American Teenager, A House in Nebraska). She runs away with a violent and troubled man. (Western Nights). That man dies in a police shoot out (?!), and she finds herself hitchhiking in Texas, where she is abducted (!!!!) by a man with homicidal and cannibalistic tendencies (!!!!). He takes her to California. He makes her think they're in love. (Thoroughfare). He gets her addicted to drugs and forces her to engage in sex work. (Gibson Girl). And finally, the man kills preacher's daughter (Ptolemaea, August Underground), and puts her in a freezer in his basement (Strangers). Preacher's daughter's soul ascends this earthly plane (Televangelism), and as she ascends, she thinks of the man she loves, the man from the house in Nebraska (Sun Bleached Flies). She says goodbye to her mother. (Strangers).

Also, this is all taking place in the late 80s/early 90s.

I can't find anything super official to verify the above ^, but if you google the album, or even the genius interpretation of the lyrics, these are the first articles that pop up. 

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If you want a track for easy listening, then hands down American Teenager is for you. This is one of the singles from the album. It came up often on my Spotify daily mixes and led me to this album. The internet describes it as "an arena anthem". It sounds like classic rock americana.

My stand out favorite from Preacher's Daughter is A House in Nebraska. It's almost 8 minutes long, and if you ask me, it couldn't have been shorter. Preacher's daughter describes an existence with this man that is known only to this man and preacher's daughter. The rest of the world is empty and silent save for them, in their well-worn, well-loved metaphorical house in Nebraska. Preacher's daughter and this man belong to each other wholly and completely, and when the man leaves, it is as though someone has plucked the sun from the sky, or the air from your lungs. I even love the metaphor of a house in Nebraska. It feels like the kind of inside reference that only two people with untold shared lore, untold hours of shared silence, untold hours of daydreaming of running away together, could have. When preacher's daughter sings about their house in Nebraska, I feel like I can close my eyes and picture myself there too. It's a two story and it's clapboard and its slats are painted white and it's surrounded by cornfields. Nothing else matters.

Preacher's daughter tells this man, the man, the only man that really matters, that his mother still calls her to check in on her. Preacher's daughter tells her that she's doing fine, but that's a lie. Preacher's daughter would do anything to hold this man again. She still waits at the edge of town, praying to God that this man will come home. He never does. Preacher's daughter knows he never will, and somehow she's the reason why. And yet, despite it all, she still calls home their metaphorical house in Nebraska. 

Have you ever loved someone like that? Wholly, completely, totally, all consuming. Have you ever, literally or figuratively, been some girl waiting every day at the edge of town for a man to return, even though you know that he never will? It feels the way that this track sounds.

And with this track, to this man who refuses to come home because of her, despite her, preacher's daughter acknowledges that even though he may never come home, and she may never find peace, she just hopes he's out there somewhere in the world, doing alright.

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A House in Nebraska makes me ugly cry. It sounds just like parts of my soul that I've tried to bury in my heart. Parts of my soul that I used to believe I wouldn't be able to survive again if I was forced to do life a second time.

^I hope that someone smarter than me is able to give us an analysis of the symbolism of Nebraska in pop music

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I told you earlier that my hyper-fixations always speak profound truths to me. I think that for a long time, I thought that I could put enough distance in between myself, as I am now, and who I used to be, back when I felt friendless and alone and scared. Like with enough distance, it's a lifetime away and none of that can hurt you anymore. Like with enough distance I beat it, I win. Preacher's Daughter is a story about a girl outrunning that feeling. And she keeps trying and trying and trying, and she never quite can.

Even though the album itself feels so singular and extraordinary, isn't the story of what happens here very ordinary (if unfortunate)? I love that Ethel gives us an album about a girl who could so easily be reduced to just a trope--- and yet Ethel never makes her feel 2D. As a narrative, nothing about this story is new-- and yet sonically, spiritually it feels like uncharted territory. Even the ordinary can still be profound.

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For weeks, I have listened to nothing but this album on repeat. Experiencing something that I find to be profound is so lonely. I've been waiting for someone to come up to me, to say "Hey- have you listened to that Ethel Cain album?". I've needed to share my thoughts on this album, it makes me feel too much to keep to myself. If you have listened/do listen to this album, please dm me about it! 

Reader, here we part. Please take care of yourself. Please know, that if you, like preacher's daughter, are crying under bleachers, telling yourself that it just isn't your year- a literal new year, with limitless potential is only days away. Keep your head up <3