Ethel Cain’s highly anticipated second studio album, “Willoughby Tucker, I’ll Always Love You,” is the summer release that was made for the fall season. The album’s ambient sound and stormy mood make it the perfect listen for a cold and aesthetically gloomy fall day.
Cain’s highly anticipated second album was released Aug. 8, and comes during a time in her career where she is becoming a familiar name in the hearts of Gen Z indie-music fans.
Cain’s popularity reached a new peak after the release of her debut EP, “Preacher’s Daughter,” in May 2022. Her music even rose on the charts years later due to the popularity of her tracks “American Teenager” and “Crush” on TikTok. Cain gained a following of young indie-music fans who also typically enjoy the music of artists like Lana Del Rey, Phoebe Bridgers, and other female indie artists.
After a three-year hiatus, Cain went on to release an EP independently titled “Perverts,” where she stepped away from the indie-pop genre she indulged in on “Preacher’s Daughter,” and instead toyed with ambient drone music (a genre that uses low, sustained sounds). Just seven months after the release of her second EP, she has now released what fans have been waiting for since 2022: her new album.
A bulk of the album’s tracks were in the hands of Cain’s fans even years prior to the album’s release. Many of these songs existed as unreleased demos on Soundcloud and Youtube, but now, they are polished and re-recorded tracks on her brand new, beautifully haunting album.
This album feels like a masterclass in storytelling and atmosphere setting. The record, along with “Preacher’s Daughter,” both work together to tell one cohesive, narrative-driven story filled with characters, overarching themes, and lore. The general story of the record follows a fictional young girl named Ethel Cain living in the religious south and her experiences with the Catholic church, family dynamics, and trauma. Cain tells this story from a first-person stance through careful lyricism and dark, brooding instrumentals.
The deep synths and distorted strings on songs like “Radio Towers” and “Willoughby’s Interlude” engulf you as you listen. Cain’s delicate voice and blunt lyricism on songs like “Dust Bowl” and “Tempest” gently carry you out of the wave that the instrumentals create. It is evident that the album borrows and blends together the sounds from Cain’s previous projects to create the symphony of sounds on this album. There are pockets of her well-known indie-pop style on songs like “F*k Me Eyes,” as well as heavy drone sounds similar to that on her EP “Perverts” in songs like “Radio Towers.”
Through the mud and the reverb, there are also folk songs on the album, like “Nettles” and “A Knock at the Door,” that Cain is also well known for, with bittersweet lyrics like, “I can hear them singin’/ ‘to love me is to suffer me’ and I believe it,” on top of raw acoustic guitar or banjo.
The album winds down with its closing track, “Waco, Texas,” a big and bold, coming-of-age-styled song. The track packs 15 minutes worth of music on the tail end of the record, but it hardly feels like it as you sink into Cain’s mastered ambiance one last time.
“Willoughby Tucker, I’ll Always Love You” is a love letter from Cain to her fans, but also feels like a love letter to music, world building, and to art as a whole. Her careful narration using only lyricism is not only impressive, but wildly enjoyable when accompanied by her production style and musical talent. If this album were a type of weather, it would be the eye of a hurricane where there is both roaring wind but also silence. If you are looking for an album to get lost in this fall while walking around campus, or while you’re sitting in your dorm room watching people pass by, give “Willoughby Tucker, I’ll Always Love You” a listen. You just might end up loving Willoughby as much as Ethel Cain does.
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