Moments in Timelessness

Willoughby Tucker, I'll Always Love You Album ∙ Alternative ∙ 2025 Ethel Cain The Florida-born singer-songwriter’s 2022 debut album,  Preacher’s Daughter , was not exactly standard pop fare—a Southern Gothic odyssey steeped in themes of original sin and family trauma, whose fictional protagonist (spoiler alert) dies at the end. Nevertheless, the album broke through to the mainstream, even cracking the Top 10 of the Billboard 200 following its vinyl reissue this spring. Her long-awaited second album, January 2025’s  Perverts , sat somewhere between passion project and provocation; its 90 minutes of eerie ambient collages seemed designed to challenge fans, if not shake them off entirely. Eight months later, Cain’s third album revisits the narrative that began with  Preacher’s Daughter , whose centerpiece, “A House in Nebraska,” is a melancholy ode to Willoughby Tucker, the protagonist’s first love.  Willoughby Tucker, I’ll Always Love You  functions as a  Pre...

Perverts Album ∙ Alternative ∙ 2025 Ethel Cain Around the time of her big break with 2022’s  Preacher’s Daughter , Ethel Cain was dubbed a pop star, though it was often hard to tell from her songs. Aside from “American Teenager,” a Springsteen-esque anthem that laundered sneakily unpatriotic sentiments through arena-ready melodies, that album’s songs were largely dirges (gorgeous ones, at that) preoccupied by ideas of doomed love, faith, and fate. Written and produced almost entirely by Cain (the stage name and alter ego of Hayden Anhedönia), the project’s lore was nearly as compelling as the music itself, launching Anhedönia into something like stardom. Since then, Anhedönia’s spoken freely about the pitfalls of popularity; she penned a Tumblr post last year identifying an irony epidemic within online fan culture: an aversion to approaching art with sincerity rather than memes. You could be tempted to view  Perverts , Cain’s first release since  Preacher’s Daughter , as ...