Ethel Cain’s New Single 'Nettles': Revisiting Preacher’s Daughter

'Nettles', Ethel Cain (Spotify, 2025)

Rating: ★ ★ ★ ★ ★

Content Warning: this article mentions transphobia, homophobia, sexual violence, and death.

To describe Ethel Cain as “strange and fascinating”, as Rolling Stone remarked earlier this year, somehow still understates the extraordinary genius of this elusive rising star of indie rock. Her most recent and stunning single, ‘Nettles’, offers fans a glimpse of her eagerly anticipated second album Willoughby Tucker, I’ll Always Love You. Cain has disclosed that Willoughby Tucker will be a prequel to the tragedy told across her critically acclaimed debut Preacher’s Daughter (2022). Naturally, it is worth revisiting the latter’s abominable tale of indoctrination, lust, and murder to show that ‘Nettles’ is an excellent segue into a new chapter for an artist unlike any of her contemporaries. 

Ethel Cain, the alter-ego of Hayden Silas Anhedonia, is the protagonist of Preacher’s Daughter, a macabre story of a blue-collar American town set to soulful yet unsettling music. Cain is not merely an aesthetic stage name or biblical reference for Anhedonia to hide behind. Nor is she just a musician known for her lengthy songs and seamless use of gospel music and rock. Anhedonia is a storyteller of the Southern Gothic tradition, wielding a guitar in place of a pen, navigating the cesspool of violence, insanity, and repression brewing beneath suburban consciousness. Through Cain and her fictional plight, Anhedonia skilfully evokes American playwrights like Tennessee Williams, reimagining their disempowered heroines and morbid themes in the modern musical age. As a transwoman raised in a Southern Baptist community, Anhedonia is also a survivor of religious and sexual oppression. While she credits the Church with her introduction to music, she ultimately chose to leave this intolerant community. Preacher’s Daughter integrates various Gothic conventions with her experiences of abuse, familial trauma, and ostracism across thirteen songs charting the life and death of Ethel Cain, who is cannibalised by her abusive boyfriend. 

‘Family Tree (Intro)’, the first track on Preacher’s Daughter, begins with a recording of the southern drawl of her father as he lectures his flock, a perfectly ominous introduction to her experience of paternal cruelty. This unsettling prologue is followed by ‘American Teenager’, the most successful song on the album after US President Obama infamously, or rather stupidly, included it in his list of favourite songs of 2022. This incredible Springsteen-style ballad critiques US gun laws, condemns war, and explicates its consequences on America’s industrial small towns (“the neighbour’s brother came home in a box… another red heart taken by the American dream”). Somewhere within the hearty electric guitars, the irony of his choice was lost on the former president. Listeners are then introduced to the character of Willoughby Tucker in ‘A House in Nebraska’. Cain yearns for Tucker, a boy who abandoned her, imagining the life they could have shared.

‘Western Nights’ follows and explores Cain’s intrigue with the sexually depraved as a coping mechanism for her all-consuming loneliness. ‘Hard Times’ then recalls the sexual abuse she suffered within the Church, and potentially at the hands of her father. Some respite is offered in ‘Thoroughfare’, where Cain believes she has found love with a man named Isaiah: “for the first time since I was a child, I could see a man who wasn’t angry”. However, this optimism is short-lived as the next song, ‘Gibson Girl’, details her experiences as a sex worker and battling various addictions. The album then horrifies with ‘Plotlemea’, referencing a circle of hell in Dante’s Inferno, and ‘August Underground’. In these two songs, Cain abandons structure and synth and replaces them with tortured screams and distorted groaning. By their conclusion, the listener realises Cain has been murdered. 

The album’s final track, ‘Strangers’, is indisputably its greatest. Gentle acoustic guitars capitulate to soul-crushing rock as Cain, from beyond the grave, bites back against all those who have wronged her. She seethes with anger, challenging her father, her ex-lovers, and her abusers to stomach what they have done as Isaiah, her murderer, literally digests her, repeating “Am I making you feel sick?”. Cain promises to torment these men, whether as a haunting memory or indigestible meal, a final act that situates her as the ultimate victor in her death. ‘Strangers’ particularly highlights Cain’s ability to deliver stunning vocals while conveying genuine fury, provoking comparison with Sinead O’Connor or Dolores O’Riordan of The Cranberries.

How does ‘Nettles’ then, a dreamy eight-minute song featuring folkish instrumentals and nostalgic recollections of teenage love, fit into this petrifying tale? Recalling the days spent luxuriating in the arms of Tucker in the grassy fields of their hometown, Cain takes listeners back to her happier past while remaining true to the conventions of Southern Gothicism that characterise Preacher’s Daughter. She attempts to ignore the reality that threatens her and Tucker’s bliss, even imagining their unlikely wedding and growing old together. “I’ve never seen brown eyes look so blue” epitomises Cain’s denial of reality, as she deludes herself with unique beauty in the place of exceptional ordinariness. She reluctantly admits “it wasn’t pretty like the movies, it was ugly”. Cain’s pessimistic acknowledgement, that the magic she has concocted cannot persist, implies Willoughby Tucker, I’ll Always Love you will be truly heartbreaking. The song-title alone even alludes to nature’s capacity to sting. 

This is a remarkable lead single that portends an eclectic yet harrowing sophomore album, likely to be as terrifyingly beautiful as its elder sister. Audiences will have to patiently wait to discover the extent to which the albums will be as intertwined as ‘Nettles’ suggests. However, Preacher’s Daughter is undoubtedly worthy of a listen either way, demonstrating the spine-chilling psyche of the indomitable Ethel Cain, a once-in-a-generation talent.

Willoughby Tucker, I’ll Always Love You will be released August 8th 2025.