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Petrichor hung over the lawn at McMenamins Edgefield on Saturday, Aug. 16. Late summer rain didn’t turn Edgefield into a mud pit, but it certainly signaled the beginning of the end of summer. The scene was perfect for Ethel Cain, singer-songwriter Hayden Anhedönia’s high concept, genre-spanning project touring her sophomore album Willoughby Tucker, I’ll Always Love You.
In a nutshell: Ethel Cain defies preexisting notions of pop viability. Her 2022 debut album, Preacher’s Daughter, blends Southern gothic sensibilities with country, grunge, pop and doomcore as something of a rock opera to tell the tale of Ethel Cain, a young woman whose escape from a fundamentalist Christian community ends with her death at the hands of a cannibal lover.
For all this, critics and even former President Barack Obama lauded Preacher’s Daughter and its lead single, “American Teenager,” for Anhedönia’s deeply immersive arrangements and soaring vocals. Preacher’s Daughter’s vinyl release earlier this year made Ethel Cain the first openly trans woman to place on Billboard’s top 10 album debuts.
By comparison, Willoughby Tucker has been marred by the reemergence of racist online posts from Anhedönia’s teen edgelord era—Anhedönia apologized and somehow was quickly forgiven—and a flash-in-the-pan controversy with Lana del Rey that peaked ahead of the Portland show (Nicki Minaj and Azealia Banks weighed in, if that tells you anything). Arguing about celebrities’ use and understanding of memes is easier than unpacking the themes Ethel Cain lays out in the Preacher’s Daughter prequel about Cain’s teen love.
Anhedönia, originally from Tallahassee, Fla., leans less into horror with Willoughby Tucker and instead delivers a late summer album of sun-soaked love that, passionate as it is, can’t quite stand up to the weight of the world as it turns into a fall-winter feel. Whereas the first half of the album uses ’80s synth, light guitars and a soft soprano range, Willoughby Tucker feels more desolate as the album carries on to the end, where Tucker’s disappearance in a tornado alludes to the tragic loss of young love maturing as it does Tucker’s possibly literal death (the whole project is open to interpretation, with the most ardent fans poring across the albums like Swifties to understand Ethel Cain’s literary world).
Ethel Cain played Willoughby Tucker through its entirety on the band’s third visit to Portland in three years, each at a venue bigger than the last. Anhedönia’s vocals matched the record precisely, though on non-Willoughby songs she took more creative liberty to stray from the tracks. “Crush,” Ethel Cain’s first big single and first of two encore songs, soared through ranges before Anhedönia handed scream-shout duties off to the crowd. She also broke the Willoughby Tucker narrative up with a medley from Perverts (pronounced as a verb, not a noun), a divisive experimental album released earlier this year, and an early song, “Misuse Oh.”
Cain might have included “American Teenager” in her encore set had concert guests not interrupted the show as often they did. Calls for security came at least four times, often during songs’ climactic moments (a fifth call came right before Ethel Cain returned to the stage, but seemed resolved enough for the band to carry on). Heat couldn’t have been a factor, though perhaps dehydration was still a culprit. Anhedönia infamously passed out during a show at the Sydney Opera House in 2023, so she surely takes concert safety seriously. Nevertheless, Portland appeared unprepared for Ethel Cain’s concert.
The band’s opener, Toronto-based shoegaze act 9Million, sounded like what might have happened if Nirvana were a Grateful Dead-style jam band. The guitars were rough as the vocals, yet the vibe felt more like a lighthearted party than I’ve ever heard from Nevermind. Both groups plainly lay flowers on the altar of Kurt Cobain, yet interpret grunge’s distorted noise in thrillingly different ways. Summer has to end eventually, but Ethel Cain and 9million provided the season with a proper sendoff show.
