Ethel Cain - Hard Times - from the 2022 album Preacher's Daughter on Daughters of Cain Records

The album title Preacher's Daughter is on point for 24-year-old artist Ethel Cain. Raised and home-schooled in a tight-knit Southern Baptist community where her father served as deacon and her mother sang in the church choir, Cain (legal name: Hayden Silas Anhedönia after a name-change at age 20) struggled against her conservative upbringing. At the age of 12, she came out as gay to her mom, and was sent to religious therapy. “My therapist was the first person in my whole life to ever tell me I wasn’t going to hell,” she told the New York Times. “I guess she didn’t understand the assignment.”

On her debut album, she explores the gothic Americana of her southern roots, with dark lyrics tapping into her difficult adolescence and love of horror films. “I love overkill — I’m nothing if not dramatic,” Cain continued. “It’s over-the-top American melodrama, it’s Thelma & Louise and the most ridiculous, psychotic, psychedelic things.”

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