Best of Month: AotY #22: Ethel Cain's "Preacher's Daughter"
Once again, I am coming to you about a record whose original release I missed, only this time it wasn’t because of my hiatus. Now, I listen to a lot every week and don’t always get to everything, especially when one of those releases is a daunting hour and fifteen minutes. That being said, I knew I had to get to Preacher’s Daughter on the basis of the singles alone I just didn’t have time to give it the full attention I already knew it deserved. When I finally listened to it was on my morning commute, which is roughly the entirety of the run time. I hung onto every note of this record and by the end it had its teeth in me.
What gets me on a sonic level is that while the entire experience is compact there is such a wide variety to enjoy. Right from the beginning you get the huge, anthemic “American Teenager” with its classic rock inspirations and a hook that I still have in my head. From there we get long-form folk storytelling tracks like “Thoroughfare,” where Cain talks about love both for someone she’s chasing and for the road itself in a nine and a half minute journey as filled with imagery as a cross country trip. By the end of the record Cain throws all ideas to the wall with songs like the anxiety-inducing “Televangelism” where she imagines her own death and ascension through an ambient piano instrumental.
Thematically, as a queer woman who moved far away from her parents this year, Cain’s lyrics about viewing the home she once wanted to flee from as something to miss really resonated with me. I was so anxious to leave New England and the parents I could not find any connection to. Now that I’m far away and we understand each other a little more, I find myself missing them around birthdays, holidays and just any good or bad time in general that I find myself having in my new day-to-day life. Cain ends this record with a song for her mother, imagining how she is missed and expressing how eager she is for them to see each other again. She also speaks of her father and how much he is needed in her orbit but isn’t there. For me, I feel just about the same. My father doesn’t really acknowledge my transition, which is funny to me, as I spent years agonizing telling him about it. My mother is trying, for real this time, to understand her child but is so physically far away. At the time of writing this there’s so much going on I haven’t even mentioned to her. What I’m trying to say is; I get it. I miss mine too and when we do eventually see each other again I can’t wait to be beside them as their daughter and see how that can grow from where we left off.
Comments
Post a Comment