The long-awaited sophomore album from Hayden Anhedönia, better known as Ethel Cain, has finally arrived. ‘Willoughby Tucker, I’ll Always Love You’ serves as a prequel to the fictional world established in Cain’s 2022 debut, ‘Preacher’s Daughter’. 

Ethel’s story was inevitable and tragic, a small-town girl from 1990s Alabama, falling in love and skipping town. Only to, as she finally believes she has escaped her traumas and fears, be murdered and cannibalised. 

Taking place five years before that album’s events, ‘Willoughby’ rewinds the clock to tell us of the boy behind ‘House in Nebraska’ and what consumed her to leave Alabama in the first place. 

The album is brewing with nostalgia, from ‘80s synths to intimate found sounds, and threaded with Anhedönia’s signature storytelling through atmospheric composition. Every sonic choice is deliberate, whether it is wind chimes, tornado sirens, train horns, or heart monitors. Each is a fragment of the rural Southern setting where Ethel’s love story unfolds. Instrumentals like ‘Willoughby’s Theme’, ‘Willoughby’s Interlude’, and ‘Radio Towers’ function as chapter breaks.

The record opens in the summer Ethel turns sixteen. ‘Janie’ channels early-2000s rock with a Deftones edge, telling the story of Ethel’s best friend finding a boyfriend. It’s the first glimpse of her abandonment fears (apart from familial ones), found in lyrics like: “I know she’s your girl now / but she was my girl first.” On Genius, Anhedönia annotates lines like “please don’t leave me / I’ll always need more / please leave open your most quiet door”, as a direct plea against the inevitable loss she will face.

As for ‘Willoughby's Theme’, it is light and gentle at first, capturing the early bloom of their love. However, things shift, foreshadowing Willoughby’s personal and actual storms, when train noises fade into a tornado siren, joined by drones and fuzzed-out heavy metal guitar. Reminiscent of ‘Laura Palmer’s Theme’ from Twin Peaks, the music is romantic yet haunted, hinting that their love will end in devastation. 

With an ‘80s pop track to break the tension, Ethel projects the rumours of local girl Holly Reddick onto herself. She evokes Kim Carnes’ ‘Bette Davis Eyes’ (a track Anhedönia has covered live lately). “She's scared of nothing but the passenger's side / Of some old man's truck in the dark parking lot”, implying Ethel would rather be complacent and have no control. However, Ethel has become the thing she never wanted to be, singing “I'll never blame her, I kinda hate her / I'll never be that kind of angel”, foreshadowing her actions in the debut and her ‘Gibson Girl’ actions.

‘Nettles’ serves as our first glimpse into how Ethel really feels about Willoughby, sweet but aching. Using the same synthesisers as Twin Peaks composer Angelo Badalamenti in the intro, Anhedönia turns to pedal steel and gentle guitar to capture the yearning she feels. Like the plant, with its prickly leaves, Ethel reflects on herself: “To love me is to suffer me”. She dreams of escape and romanticised futures, even as she fears she’ll retreat into pain rather than face it. Her yearning is “ironic,” Anhedönia annotates, because both lovers are chasing maturity they can’t seem to reach.

Wind chimes scatter throughout ‘Dust Bowl’, giving this track its ghostly pull. The refrain slows and grows heavier, hinting that Willoughby is moving on from Ethel, our unreliable narrator. His absence in her life weighs more than his presence. “And his eyes all over me / over me” repeats, as Ethel slowly begins to believe his love is dissipating. Her “Pretty boy / Natural blood-stained blonde” is an idealised figure in Ethel’s mind and reads like admiration, where Ethel is painting Willoughby with rose colored glasses on.

‘A Knock At The Door’ is playful, a spiral downward into madness as the song gives way to the final arc of the album. Combined with another instrumental, ‘Radio Towers’ incorporates tornado sirens and heart monitors, bridging directly into the ten-minute emotional pull. This one perfectly transitions into ‘Tempest’, which would sound perfect on vinyl

From Willoughby’s perspective, ‘Tempest’ is both literal and metaphorical: the tornado that hits their small town is also the chaos inside him of his depression, restlessness, and trauma. Ethel’s idolisation of him as a saviour diminishes his pain. His worn-out sneakers are a metaphor for his exhaustion and escape, taunting that he is wearing his pain for sympathy. Willoughby’s refrain, “I can lead you to bed / but I can’t make you sleep”, implies that love can’t fix what one must heal themselves. The music swells, and the storm takes him. 

At over fifteen minutes, the album’s final track, ‘Waco, Texas,’ is a farewell. Not just to Willoughby, but to Ethel’s illusions, and to the fictional universe that Anhedönia has been building for years. The last four minutes are pure fuzzy guitars and heavenly vocals, fading into memory. In-story, it’s Ethel saying goodbye to the idea of Willoughby and moving forward. And in reality, it’s Anhedönia closing out Ethel Cain’s story.

Ethel’s story is a cautionary tale: in trying to outrun your demons, you risk running headlong into someone else’s. There are monsters far worse than your hometown, your family, or even yourself. You can only choose not to be defined by your fears and your past.

By the end of ‘Preacher’s Daughter’, Ethel’s murder grants her peace, choosing herself in her final moments. In ‘Willoughby Tucker, I’ll Always Love You’, the lesson is different. Hold on to love, have faith in it, and understand that ‘forever’ is something you make, not something you’re given.

Ethel Cain is touring the U.S. and Europe starting this August; tickets are available here.