Critique of religion and the negative lasting impact it may leave on someone is often a touchy subject. It’s a subject matter that most people tread with caution while discussing. However, the opposite for Hayden Silas Anhedönia’s debut album, “Preacher’s Daughter,” shows this.
“Preacher’s Daughter” was Anhedönia’s passion project for several years. Anhedönia, who goes by the stage name of Ethel Cain, has produced music under several different aliases since around 2017. She would settle with the name “Ethel Cain” in 2019 and release her debut EP, “Carpet Bed,” in Sept. of that year.
“Preacher’s Daughter” is a concept album that revolves around the story of the character, Ethel Cain. Hayden Silas Anhedönia would take on the stage name of “Ethel Cain” to sing from the character’s perspective. The album is the first part in a trilogy of albums that Anhedönia is currently creating and releasing. Anhedönia has explained that the character of Ethel Cain is something she uses to explore the possibilities of what her life could have been like if she had gone down a dark path.
“It’s kind of the entryway into this big story of what I describe as a cautionary tale,” she explained to Kevan Kenny during an interview in 2023. “I think it’s everything I’ve always been scared of, everything I’ve been worried about happening, kind of just dump into that story and explore what would happen if life went this way. It’s kind of all my nightmares of what could happen in life. It’s kind of a motivational reason to not let yourself go down these kinds of paths. It’s my imagining of what may lie down some of these roots or roads in life that you may not need to be traveling.” she explained further.
The album opens with “Family Tree (Intro)”, which includes a recording of a preacher discussing the importance of mothers. “Jesus can always reject his father, but he cannot escape his mother’s blood” sung Ethel Cain. One of the main themes explored in this album is generational trauma. By using Jesus as an example, Cain is explaining the point that Mary was a virgin when she conceived Jesus so therefore he is almost entirely made up of her. A comparison to this is how one is practically guaranteed to inherit certain traits through genetics. Jesus is unable to run away from what his mother has passed down to him similarly to the way somebody may not be able to escape the things passed down to them by the family members that came before them.
“Strangers” is the closing track of the album and is arguably one of the most popular songs on the album altogether. Its popularity has landed a spot on the soundtrack for one of last year’s most controversial movies, “It Ends with Us”.
The character of Ethel Cain is devastating. Cain is someone who craves love and validation from people so badly that she is willing to do anything, and those around her take advantage of this fact. Her disparity and loneliness lead her to become attached to people who lead to her downfall and demise. She wishes for a time when everything was simpler and she didn’t feel alone as she sung “A House in Nebraska.”
Instead of recognizing that these horrible things occurred to her under the hands of evil people around her, Cain questions if it is her fault due to her shortcomings. She blames herself for how the people around her treat her and believes she doesn’t deserve true love.
Cain’s perception of love is also severely skewed as we learn that Cain’s childhood wasn’t necessarily the best.
In Cain’s eyes, God has done nothing but bring her pain in her very short lifetime. The religion that had been forced onto her from a young age had ultimately done more harm to her than good.
Hayden Silas Anhedönia was raised in a small southern Baptist church that wasn’t always very accepting of those who were different. This would become an issue for Anhedönia after the realization that she was queer. When interviewed for Rolling Stone, she would describe her experience. “I had crushes on girls, I had crushes on boys, and I didn’t even really know what that meant,” she explained to Rolling Stone. “I started to get this inkling in my head at some point as I was approaching adolescence, like, ‘Is that not allowed?’” She would later come to a realization that she was a transgender woman and shared this news publicly on Facebook for the first time. Her experience of being shunned in the church for being different and falling into dark time due to this is something that many people can relate to.
