Ethel Cain Is Only Getting Darker
The gothic doomsayer returns with a droning seance inspired by *checks notes* an infamous murdered pedophile.
In an effort to maintain mystique and interpretive distance, a lot of musicians are hesitant to explain exactly what their songs are, you know, about. Hayden Anhedönia, who makes music as Ethel Cain, does not have that inclination. On the topic of her haunted new track “Punish,” she wrote that it is about “a pedophile who was shot by the child’s father and now lives in exile where he physically maims himself to simulate the bullet wound in order to punish himself.” So that settles that! (The idea is based on a true story from the ’80s.) To be fair, she added, “The song can be whatever you want it to be.” But her description is so specific—and harrowing—that it reads like a dare to all those songwriters who are still hung up on regrettable exes and vague trauma, bound by their own lived experience: Stop playing it safe.
