the story of preacher’s daughter

paying homage to one of my favourite albums of all time

cw: themes of abuse and violence.

two years ago, singer-songwriter hayden silas anhedönia (professionally know as ethel cain) released her first studio album preacher’s daughter, a haunting lyrical tale of love and loss spread across thirteen hybrid-genre tracks. though many of the events detailed in the album narrative are fictional, it is clear that anhedönia drew inspiration from her own experiences, including her southern baptist upbringing and the surrounding family dynamic that shaped much of her early life. ultimately, the story can be seen as a southern-gothic fairytale gone wrong, a cautionary fable about the perils of chasing the american dream and being lured away by enigmatic strangers, all topped off with incredible production and beautiful vocals from hayden herself.

family tree (intro) lays the foundation for all that follows, delving into central recurring themes of religion and generational trauma. the song opens with a vintage recording of a preacher, grainy and eerily distorted yet still faintly audible. he emphasises the role of mothers, not just in the church but as an integral force in the world as a whole- they are “precious gifts” from god, special in the way they love; ethel’s voice echoes over him, soft and dreamlike, while the heavy instrumental builds. she says that jesus (son of god, born of the virgin mary) “can always reject his father” but he will never be able to “escape” the familial ties he shares with his mother as they are fundamentally made of the same genetic substance. in the same way, cain feels bound to her mother, just as she was bound to her mother before her- she envisages herself “swinging by [her] neck from the family tree”, trapped in the cycle of cruelty and abuse suffered by all of the women who came before her.

the story officially begins with american teenager, a more upbeat sound with clear influences of classic and indie rock. it is here that we are formally introduced to ethel cain, a young woman who delivers sermons at her local church in shady grove (a fictional town in alabama) following the death of her father, the titular preacher. throughout the song she expresses feelings of isolation from her peers as well as faltering faith, and the second verse shows her increasing reliance on alcohol as a coping mechanism. cain feels an innate sense of duty towards the community as well as pressure to follow in her father’s footsteps and preserve his legacy, but she also craves freedom and expresses a desire to leave the town and make a life for herself elsewhere.

a house in nebraska marks an audible change in mood from the very first note, cold and raw and immediately evocative. ethel laments her past relationship with a man named willoughby tucker, reminiscing the time they spent together and mourning her dreams for their future. the ballad presents their love as intense and viscerally emotive, an all-consuming adoration that made her feel as though they were the only people in the whole world. she associated him with safety and comfort and in his absence she feels painfully alone, implying she never lost her feelings towards him, and despite her waning religious belief she still makes a point of praying for him and his well-being.

in western nights ethel details her new relationship with rebellious biker logan phelps. her perspective on love begins to disintegrate as high-strung devotion mingles with violence and exploitation, until eventually her lover is killed in a gun battle with the police and she is forced to flee. family tree returns to the introductory themes of blood-relations and wider ideas of redemption as ethel pleads to be taken to the river and bathed clean, wishing to rid herself of past torment and lingering sin. this sentiment continues in hard times, a melancholic retelling of the abuse she faced as a child at the hands of her father. she was “nine going on eighteen”, vulnerable and naïve in body and spirit and unable to recognise that “some types of love could be bad”. as a result, she carries the weight of her trauma and the guilt of her father’s passing with her into adulthood; no matter how many wild-eyed men she meets or how many desperate prayers she whispers into the sky, she will never be free from her past.

the second act of the album opens with thoroughfare, a nine-minute epic filled with echoes of soft rock and country. having left home, ethel is approached and offered a ride by a charismatic stranger known as isiah; she accepts, and the pair travel across the country together and gradually fall in love. upon their arrival in california, ethel begins to work as a prostitute under isiah- gibson girl is sultry and brooding, a gritty haze of sex and drugs that escalates as ethel begins to lose her grip on reality. in some ways, she sees her new lifestyle as thrilling, even liberating in comparison to her experiences back home, but as the guitars fade out and the dark clouds of warning begin to roll in, her initial excitement becomes replaced with an urgent sense of danger and doom.

the transition into ptolemaea is bleak and guttural. in her disoriented state, ethel begins to hallucinate as her memories merge with the religious teachings her father ingrained into her from an early age. she senses that “suffering is nigh… calling [her] the one… the white light, beautiful, finite”, suggesting she sees her anguish and inevitable death as holy, with the “white light” potentially representing the holy spirit or an angel of god coming down to collect her soul. the second discernible verse assumes a tone of overarching paranoia, as ethel recalls “hiding from something [she] cannot stop”, namely death. she is the “sweet, mourning lamb” ensnared in isiah’s morbid trap, knowing there is nothing she can do now to change her fate.

named after the infamous pseudo-snuff film, august underground is a gloomy instrumental track representing ethel’s murder, followed by televangelism which depicts her ascension to heaven (or an afterlife of some description) where she makes peace with her death and reflects on the events of her life. the penultimate track sun bleached flies is a gospel-style farewell to the community of shady grove, with the flies acting as a metaphor for all the young women and mothers stifled and trapped by the constraints of christianity. ethel sings about her faith, particularly in relation to her suffering, knowing that while she was on earth no one would save her; not her father, not her lovers, not even her own mother, and she accepts this. the song ends with one final mention of willoughby, the true love of her life, and how a future with him was all she ever wanted.

finally, strangers completes the gruesome affair between ethel and isiah as she watches him from heaven devour her earthly body. in a sorrowful, almost childlike manner, she explains how she “tried to be good” and all she really yearned for was to be loved, yet it still wasn’t enough to save her. she watches as he walks over to the freezer, removes her body and begins to eat her, remarking that he looks handsome with her blood smeared around his mouth. as the song swells towards its grungy climax, cain addresses isiah directly by asking- half-concerned, half-mocking- if she’s making him feel sick; sick with guilt for the way he treated her, but also in case her flesh has been tainted by her dark past and is therefore making him feel ill. she imagines her mother learning of her disappearance and feels guilty for the grief she will likely cause to her family as a result- this is illustrated in the final verse of the song as ethel leaves her mother with some faint words of hope to last until they are eventually reunited in death.

“blessed be the daughters of cain, bound to suffering eternal through the sins of their fathers committed long before their conception. blessed be their whore mothers, tired and angry, waiting with bated breath in a ferry that will never move again. blessed be the children, each and every one come to know their god through some senseless act of violence. blessed be you, girl, promised to me by a man who can only feel hatred and contempt towards you. i am no good nor evil, simply i am, and i have come to take what is mine. i was there in the dark when you spilled your first blood, i am here now, as you run from me still. run then, child. you can't hide from me forever.”

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