LOS ANGELES, CA- There are certain artists who don’t just write songs… they build worlds. And I’ve always gravitated toward those musicians who can take the intimacy of a lyric and stretch it into an entire mythology, crafting storylines that hurt as much as they heal. When an artist is able to weave their voice into a narrative arc so vivid that you feel every crack of pain, every whispered promise, it goes beyond music. It becomes something lived.
That’s how I’ve come to know and love Ethel Cain. I can’t even remember the first song I heard from her, but I do remember the feeling: the quiet ache, the Southern Gothic weight, the way her words lingered like a ghost. Take her Preacher’s Daughter debut from 2022, a sprawling and devastating concept album steeped in religious trauma, Americana mythology, and tender devastation. On “A House in Nebraska,” she sings, “I’ve been picking names for our children”… a line that pierces like a knife, capturing the tragic mix of hope and futility that defines so much of her work.
That album told the story of a preacher’s daughter trapped in a cycle of violence, faith, and longing. A Southern Gothic novel in song form. Critics have called it one of the most haunting debuts of the decade, and it cemented Cain not just as a songwriter but as a storyteller in the grand tradition of American mythmaking.
Fast forward three years, and Cain returned with her second record, Willoughby Tucker, I’ll Always Love You. It is the album she was touring when she stopped at Los Angeles’ Shrine Auditorium on August 20, 2025. If Preacher’s Daughter was the story of ruin, Willoughby Tucker is the prequel: a look back at a doomed young love set in 1986, five years before her debut’s events.
It is, by Cain’s own words, an album about memory, grief, and the fragile nature of love. The songs aren’t linear so much as cinematic, evoking moods and places rather than straightforward plot. In “Waco, Texas,” she sings, “I’ve been picking names for our children / You’ve been wondering how you’re gonna feed them / Love is not enough in this world.” It’s a devastating callback to Preacher’s Daughter, but framed through the innocence of a younger self: dreaming big, colliding with reality, and already feeling the edges of heartbreak.
Musically, the album is a slow burn. Critics have compared its textures to Twin Peaks dream sequences, blending folk, slowcore, and ambient Americana into something both intimate and unearthly. There are moments of softness that sound like they could break under their own weight, followed by waves of synth and reverb that swallow you whole. It’s the kind of record that demands patience, and at the Shrine, that patience was rewarded.
Before Cain took the stage, the opening act 9Million warmed up the crowd. Their set was solid, leaning into shadowy textures that made sense as a prelude. But let’s be honest: everyone in that room was there for Ethel Cain, and the anticipation was palpable.
When the lights dimmed and Cain emerged, the Shrine transformed. The stage design alone felt like stepping into her mythos. Overhanging branches stretched above her like a haunted Southern forest. The podium she sang from was designed in the shape of a cross, but one built in the shape of power lines; an arresting visual that tied together her obsessions with faith, electricity, and transmission. Cain has long leaned into imagery of radios, towers, and static, and here she made it literal: her voice as signal, her body as conduit.
I caught myself staring at the merch table earlier, debating whether to buy the t-shirt with that very cross/power-line design. I went with another shirt instead, but the imagery stuck with me, because it wasn’t just aesthetic. It symbolized the very heart of Cain’s project: a transmission of grief and beauty, wired through pain but reaching for something eternal.
The setlist drew heavily from Willoughby Tucker: “Willoughby’s Theme,” “Janie,” “Fuck Me Eyes,” “Nettles,” “Radio Towers,” and of course, “Waco, Texas.” Each song unfolded like another chapter, Cain’s voice shifting between pure power and fragile intimacy. At times she was backlit, her silhouette framed against stark light, her figure looming like a preacher delivering a sermon. Other times she seemed small, swallowed by the stage, as if she were just another ghost haunting her own music.
When her band played the music of “Radio Towers,” the symbolism clicked into place. There were no words, only this sombre, droning soundscape reverberating through the Shrine, as if carried across invisible wires. Framed by the imagery of power lines, branches, and gothic shadows, the piece embodied everything Cain’s world represents: both sacred and profane, natural and industrial, soft and brutal. It was the perfect collision of her aesthetic, and it left me spellbound.
And then there was her voice. That’s the thing about Cain. Her records prepare you for the themes, but nothing quite readies you for the sound of her live performance. The frailty in her tone when she let herself break, the power when she rose into full-throated cries. It all hit with an intensity that felt deeply personal, as if she were unraveling in real time.
The encores pulled from earlier material, including the “Crush” and the anthemic “American Teenager” from Preacher’s Daughter. Hearing that song after the entirety of Willoughby Tucker was like looking at the same person through different timelines: the young girl already carrying the weight of what we know comes next. It was both cathartic and cruel, knowing where the story ends, yet unable to resist its beauty.
That’s what Ethel Cain does best: she makes you live inside her mythology. Her concerts are more than performances; they’re rituals. She’s not just singing songs, she’s transmitting pain, hope, and memory across those invisible lines… just like the power line she’s singing behind.
Walking out of the Shrine, I felt a rare kind of completeness. I’d just witnessed a chapter of a story that has burrowed itself into me, one I’ll keep revisiting until the final installment comes. Cain has hinted that the Ethel Cain persona is part of a trilogy, and that one day she’ll close this book and move on. Who knows how long it will take, or what the final record will hold, but I’ll be waiting. Patiently. Eagerly.
Because when music feels like this. When it connects like this. When it tells stories that hurt as much as they heal. You don’t just listen. You believe.
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LIVE CLIPS
