Review Summary: Love is not enough in this world, but I still believe in Nebraska dreaming
Ethel Cain’s debut LP
Preacher’s Daughter was the definition of groundbreaking music. The way Hayden Anhedonia wove together breathtaking dream pop, elegant indie-folk, and spacious ambience with dark, sinister storytelling - all through the lens of a transgender woman - resulted in a landmark moment for music in the 2020s. For a snapshot of just how artistically diverse
Preacher’s Daughter was, all you’d need to do is play ‘American Teenager’ ‘A House In Nebraska’, and ‘Ptolemaea’ consecutively. It’s been three years since she broke through into the spotlight, but just in case you missed it, she’s already had a busy start to 2025. In January, she delivered an anti-fame EP of sorts in the shadowy, droning
Perverts. If that release was a middle finger to those seeking to exploit her rising popularity, then her proper full-length sophomore album,
Willoughby Tucker, I'll Always Love You, is - ironically, perhaps - her most accessible work. Thematically, it serves as a prequel to
Preacher’s Daughter, centered around Ethel Cain’s childhood, how she grew up, and the people she knew along the way. It still revels in gorgeous pop ambience and sweeping drone sections, but it’s also distinctly
country - an entire album’s worth of ‘A House In Nebraska’ if you will, at the clear risk of alienating everyone reading this by oversimplifying what
Willoughby brings to the table. It may not possess the overtly creepy, hair-raising moments that its predecessor did, but Ethel Cain’s latest is very clearly the most
beautiful music she’s ever made.
Willoughby Tucker, I'll Always Love You mostly alternates between two aesthetics: ambient, winding country-tinged tunes, and mesmerizing drone sections that envelop those moments and slowly build atmosphere. ‘Janie’ leads off with a stunning performance from Anhedonia, laid gently over the top of reverb-drenched guitar plucks and haunting vocal harmonizations. She sings (again through the character of Ethel Cain) about the fear of losing her close-knit relationship with her sister - heavily implied as her only true friend - while her sister falls deeper in love with a man: “Please don’t leave me, I'll always need more”, she pleads, eventually pivoting with a direct message to her sister’s boyfriend, “I know she's your girl now, but she was my girl first.” The track seamlessly bleeds into ‘Willoughby’s Theme’, a stunning instrumental concoction of elegant classical pianos, rising and falling synths, and thundering, cavernous drums. The two songs almost feel as though they’re one: the heartfelt plea, followed by the heartbroken realization occurring inside the mind of the narrator that she is about to become completely, agonizingly alone.
‘Fuck Me Eyes’ is this album’s ‘American Teenager’, the undeniable pop song that flashes moments catchier than the more sullen, thoughtful laments surrounding it. Still, ‘Fuck Me Eyes’ is brooding in its own way, observing the way Holly Reddick (in the story, the character who competes with Ethel Cain for Willoughby Tucker’s love) is outwardly showy and tries to steal his attention. “She's no good at raising children, but she's good at raising hell”, Anhedonia sings, eventually conceding “I'll never blame her for trying to make it / But I'll never be the kind of angel he would see.” The song also touches on abuse, offering empathetic insight to Holly and possibly explaining the catalyst behind her behavior: “She's scared of nothing but the passenger's side of some old man's truck in the dark parking lot / She's just trying to feel good right now / They wanna take her out, but no one ever wants to take her home / And when she leaves, they never see her wiping her 'fuck me' eyes.” It’s possible that Holly seeks the approval and protection from another man because she’s afraid to go home - a sobering and terribly saddening thought.
‘Nettles’ follows with a delicate, acoustic-picked country/folk tale replete with a late-track fiddle solo. The song is centered around Ethel and Willoughby, who are “in a race to grow up” not only out of their romantic interest in each other, but also as a means of surviving their troubled upbringings. Amid the plucked guitars and rustic strings, Anhedonia sings of Cain feeling invisible (“You'll go fight a war, I'll go missing / I warned you, for me, it's not that hard”), and compares herself to nettles - a type of plant that grows stinging hairs to protect itself from a dangerous or harsh environment: “Lay me down where the trees bend low / Put me down where the greenery stings / To love me is to suffer me.” It’s a poetic yet heartwrenching character description written by Anhedonia, and it plays perfectly into the plot of Ethel Cain and what we already know about her from
Preacher’s Daughter. After ‘Willoughby’s Interlude’ - a seven minute trance of cold, ominous drones that culminate in the warm embrace of softly glowing keys and the barely audible sound of a free-flowing river - we get ‘Dust Bowl’, which in essence continues the story of Cain and Tucker. “Tend to the row of your violets, with your eyes all over me”, she tenderly sings, “Watching, hoping the wind blows slowly / So I can keep you, a moment.” Ethel appears to be terrified of their love being fleeting, and wants to hold his gaze - both literally and figuratively - as they navigate their uncertain adolescent years together. The three track sequence focuses heavily on their growth together, until she eventually falls for Willoughby entirely: “I knew it was love / When I rode home crying / Thinking of you fucking other girls” / “But when you said that you're in love / I never wondered if you're sure.”
The break in her perhaps fantasized vision of their love comes on the breathtakingly pastoral - and yet somehow altogether piercing - ‘A Knock At The Door’, where Cain slowly starts to realize that Willoughby Tucker may not be the saving grace she thought she needed. A knock on the door in this instance represents death, either in a literal sense or as the term might apply to their relationship, and Anhedonia laments, “Everything I've loved, I've loved it straight to death / So I'm still scared of that knock on the door.” After the eerie quiet and electronic beeping of ‘Radio Towers’ - thematically a representation of the calm before the storm - we get ‘Tempest’, which is written from the perspective of Willoughby and delves into his own self-harm, substance abuse, and refusal to commit to anything or anyone in life: “I'll hurt myself if I want, I don't care / Don't ask me why I hate myself as I'm circling the drain / 'Cause death, it takes too long, and I can't wait / You can try and stop me, hold me, do all the things that you do / But it's no good.” It’s the first and only glimpse into the mind of Tucker, who clearly has his own demons to battle and can’t seem to accept Ethel Cain as his saving grace either, because he doesn’t believe in one. To a longing, ongoing chant of “forever”, the song then abruptly cuts out.
You and me against the world, you were my man and I your girl
We had nothing except each other, you were my whole world
But then the day came, and you were up and gone
And I still call home that house in Nebraska
By the time the towering fifteen minute curtain-call ‘Waco, Texas’ arrives, we’ve almost reached the present day of
Preacher’s Daughter. This is the moment that Willoughby Tucker leaves Ethel Cain, and the flawless lyrical tie-in to ‘A House In Nebraska’ proves enough to send a chill up the spine of anyone who has followed the plot since
Preacher’s Daughter:
I’ve been picking names for our children, you’ve been wondering how you’re gonna feed them
Love is not enough in this world
But I still believe in Nebraska dreaming
Cause I’d rather die than be anything but your girl
Save me from another late night of red eyes
But then the morning comes
You were there looking for me, but I
I was gone
And you had fallen apart
The drums steadily beat across ‘Waco, Texas’, and it’s like feeling your pulse pound against the inside of your head. As the expansive track winds across its gutwrenching lyrics, flourishing strings, and angelic harmonies, you can feel the worlds of
Willoughby Tucker, I'll Always Love You and
Preacher’s Daughter colliding, intersecting at this inflection point in Ethel Cain’s life that clearly left her a shattered and changed person.
Given the narrative that spans the two records, comparisons between
Preacher’s Daughter and
Willoughby Tucker, I'll Always Love You are inevitable. Hell, I’ve done it several times in this very review. Yet, the albums really
shouldn’t be compared because they rely on each other to fulfill what might only be described as a brilliant achievement in modern songwriting.
Willoughby Tucker, I'll Always Love You provides so much background and context to enrich
Preacher’s Daughter, and the latter informs lyrics on
Willoughby that make it perfect to consume as a prequel. There’s so much pain and sadness that spans Hayden Anhedonia’s story, but there’s also poetry in the way it is written, and beauty in the way it’s all pieced together like one elaborate puzzle. As
Willoughby Tucker, I'll Always Love You winds to a close, it feels like reading the final part of a novel that kept you hanging on its every word. No matter what Anhedonia does next, this will always be a classic chapter in her book.
Your mama calls me sometimes
To see if I'm doing well
And I lie to her
And say that I'm doing fine
When really I'd kill myself
To hold you one more time
Now I'll wear these scars for life
I loved you when it hurt inside to
But in the low light
You know I'd do anything for you
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