Ethel Cain Explores Torrid Love Affairs and Crippling Insecurities in Golden Age
Southern gothic priestess Ethel Cain grapples with inner demons and external desires in her second EP, Golden Age.
Written by Kaileen Rooks
Photo courtesy of The Stony Book Press
“Do you just want my blood? Am I just that damn hard to love?” asks Ethel Cain in the title track of Golden Age. This EP, along with the EP released after it, Inbred, serve as a prelude to Hayden Anhedönia’s debut album, Preacher’s Daughter. Together, they operate as an unofficial prelude to the story of Ethel Cain, her stage pseudonym, and a character invented by the Florida native.
Golden Age delves into the same themes that underpin all of Cain’s discography: insecurity, mental health issues, misguided devotion, the thin line between love and violence, and, though less directly in this EP than elsewhere in her discography, generational and religious trauma. The EP is an ethereal, hazy, and occasionally nightmarish journey through the gothic South, painting a world of abandoned Georgia chapels, ghostly Louisiana swamps, and decaying Alabama manors. Golden Age sets a distinct tone of longing and suffering, which slowly bleeds into fury and desperation in her following EP, Inbred.
Opening with the delicate, echoing “Sunday Morning,” Cain toes the line between devotion and cruelty, describing a complicated relationship with a lover who offers comfort yet causes harm. Acoustic guitar frames Cain’s incandescent, cascading vocals that shimmer over the track like beams of late-afternoon sunlight streaming through a window. In a slow and airy intro, Cain softly asks, “ Do I look pretty when I ask you to hit me?” Referencing her desperate need to please her lovers — a recurring theme common to the Cain character throughout her discography — the sultry singer expresses her fragility and all-consuming desire to be good enough, especially for those closest to her. “Hands like barbed wire / Wrapping ‘round my throat, making me cry,” she laments, establishing early a trend that would become a staple throughout all of Cain’s works: the inability to find a lover who does not also hurt her. She’s fated, doomed by the abuse of her father (explained further in Preacher’s Daughter), to accept mistreatment. In her mind, abuse and love are forever intertwined and incessantly searched for wherever she goes. Building upward and growing louder, the track introduces a steady bassline. Vocals overlap, creating a dynamic, dramatic sound like a crescendoing orchestral movement, culminating in a return to the softness that opened the track. Cain leaves us with the devastating yet somehow sweet final line: “Nothing hurts, not even you.”
“Casings” continues with the themes of “Sunday Morning” as Cain repeatedly asks her unnamed lover, “Am I not good enough for you?” Once again, she’s possessed by the torment of her own insecurity, with self-doubt and codependency permeating the track.. Beginning with a slow downbeat and subdued vocals, “Casings” soon breaks open, spilling its guts in a gory, sanguineous mess as Cain’s stress and despair metastasize, mirroring the music’s swell. Masking a deeper insecurity, she questions her lover, “Is she prettier than me? Is her skin softer than mine?” Beneath these anxieties about her physical appearance lies a deeper fear that her soul is tainted and polluted by her sins. Later, Cain returns to these concerns in a dramatic climax on her Preacher’s Daughter track “Strangers” where she echoes a similar question: “Am I no good?”
Similarly, “Lilies” tells a tale as old as time — a love doomed to end in disaster. Ethel Cain knows this storied fate all too well. Throughout her discography, Cain’s multiple love affairs end in tragedy, including her final love affair, which culminates in her grisly death. Leaning heavily into Cain’s shoegaze influences with a feature by dream-pop singer Mercy Necromancy, the track drones like a solemn hymn. Devotional and saccharine, the song’s lovesick sweetness evokes a torrid yet passionate affair. “What a wondrous thing to be in love,” Cain ponders, celebrating the beauty of her adoration before undermining it with the realization that “I’m gonna hurt you / I know I’m gonna lose you / But God, I don’t want to.” Cain laments this early love’s inevitable end, calling out for divine affection — the one constant in her life. God was Cain’s first love and first heartbreak, foreshadowing all of her relationships with her family and future lovers.
Reeking of the same lyrical anger and fervor that pervades Inbred, Cain fills “Head In The Wall” with cursing, violent imagery, and angst. Despite its lyrical aggression, the song opens calmly, following along with the typical dark, funereal ambiance of the rest of the EP. However, as the track builds, Cain’s vocals strain in despair and the music intensifies, buzzing like TV static. She berates a lover she can’t seem to escape, no matter how fervently she tries: “Sometimes, you make me wanna put my / Fucking head through the wall.” Her inability to escape dangerous scenarios haunts Cain throughout her life. Running away from home offers no relief; she only finds herself trapped in another dangerous situation. “There’s no escaping you now,” she howls repeatedly, bemoaning her situation and pleading for safety from the hell she continually finds herself in. Once again, her insecurity resurfaces to bite her as she asks, “And how am I supposed to feel good / About myself when everything I do is wrong?” Just as Cain cannot escape the cell of her torrid love affair, she spirals in the prison of her own mind, drowning in a whirlpool of self-hatred and anguish. The song peaks with Cain’s fury at her lover, at the world, and most of all at God, the origin point of all her suffering. She wails, “Fuck the cops and fuck God / And fuck this town for ruining us.” Then, as the song cools back down to a slow twang, Cain concludes with the final, heartrending lyric: “Sometimes, I wonder if I ever / Even knew you at all.”
Photo courtesy of Homie Shit Magazine
Cain’s near-constant abuse rears its ugly head once again in “Knuckle Velvet.” The same twangy guitar from “Head In The Wall” carries this song, layered with the singer’s melodic vocals. The guitar stands out in this track, beginning with a simple, relaxed chord progression before breaking out into a full country-style drawl during the chorus. Despite being the only song from the EP not produced by Anhedönia herself, “Knuckle Velvet” leans into her gothic Americana influences while reflecting Hip-Hop producer Yah Wav’s distinctive touch. Though the track begins steady and droning, “Knuckle Velvet” explodes at its chorus. Cain’s vocals shift from a hushed, husky drone, slow and melting through the chords like molasses, to a luminescent, hypnotic cry that plunges out from behind the gauzy curtains of the guitar’s delicate strumming. Gory and graphic, “Knuckle Velvet”’s lyrics bemoan the abuse Cain faces at the hands of her lover, while also referencing her complicated relationship with religion. “I’m saying prayers through a throttled neck,” Cain moans. “Shed your knuckle velvet, torn on my teeth,” she orders. Elaborating on this abuse, Cain also mentions a motive common to all her prior and future lovers: “When you're torn apart, you’ll destroy me again.” She resolves that they must work through their own suffering by inflicting suffering on her.
The celestial and haunting “Golden Age” closes out the EP, saturated with Cain’s rich, echoing vocals and tying together the EP’s themes of traumatic love, abuse, insecurity, and a desperate yearning for happiness. Perhaps the track with the most poignant lyrics on the EP, “Golden Age” depicts Cain mourning her inability to find a worthwhile love. “Letting in the wild with each man who brings a world of hurt with him,” she sings, referencing her habit of falling in love with men who will only abuse her. Abuse is all that Cain has ever known,, and it’s become second nature to her. “It feels like I all have is still just not enough,” she despairs, once again torn asunder by her issues with self-doubt and guilt that stem from her religious and familial trauma. As the track builds, the hum of guitar in the background grows into a jarring, buzzing wail, encased by Anhedönia’s stunning, lustrous vocals, layered over each other to create a phantasmagorical effect.
Cain ends “Golden Age” on a slightly lighter note, offering a simple, yet hopeful declaration: “I’m on my way / I’ll be coming along.”
Golden Age is a poignant exploration of Cain’s troublesome love affairs and internal issues, and despite its overall somber tone, Cain establishes a trend that she would continue with on Preacher’s Daughter, ending with a bittersweet note of hope that both ties up the record and leaves us with a lingering notion that there’s more story yet to come.