There's something profoundly unsettling about witnessing the birth of a tragedy.
Ethel Cain's second studio album, Willoughby Tucker, I'll Always Love You, serves as the prequel to her critically acclaimed debut Preacher's Daughter, and it carries the weight of inevitability like a funeral shroud.
This is Hayden Anhedönia at her most vulnerable and artistically daring, crafting what she herself has described as "the scariest record I think I’ve ever made" through her social media channels.
Released on August 8, 2025 via her independent imprint Daughters of Cain Records, this album follows the controversial 89-minute drone EP Perverts earlier this year, establishing 2025 as perhaps Anhedönia's most prolific and challenging period yet.
Where Perverts tested listeners' patience with its meditative ambient brutality, Willoughby Tucker, I'll Always Love You finds the perfect balance between accessibility and artistic integrity. It's a Southern gothic journey that feels almost intrusive in its intimacy.
The album chronicles the doomed love affair between Ethel and Willoughby Tucker, the man whose toxic attachment would ultimately lead to her destruction in Preacher's Daughter.
But here, in this prequel space, we witness the intoxicating beginning rather than the brutal end. Anhedönia tackles themes of forgiveness, jealousy, devotion, and grief in their most extreme forms, creating what amounts to a forensic examination of how love can become poison.
From the outset, it's clear this isn't an album that requires much intellectual heavy lifting from the listener. The sounds take you by the hand and guide you through the story that unfolds before your eyes.
The disarming sonics work in perfect harmony with otherworldly and precipitous interludes that speak to Ethel's obsessive love for Willoughby. This is concept album mastery from an artist who has proven she belongs in the category of musicians unafraid to risk commercial suicide for artistic expression.
"Nettles" which served as the album's lead single upon its June release, immediately establishes the emotional stakes. The pain feels fresh and raw, with ethereal synths perfectly complementing Ethel's ghostly vocals as she confesses, "To love me is to suffer me." It's a line that encapsulates the entire project, love as both salvation and damnation, intimacy as both healing and harm.
The album's sonic palette draws heavily from Anhedönia's stated love for overlooked 1960s jazz legends, but filtered through a contemporary lens that feels both timeless and urgently modern.
"Fuck Me Eyes" stands as perhaps the album's most surprising moment! An exceptional track built around '80s synths with modern synthpop elements.
Originally written years ago, Anhedönia revisited the song for this project, later confessing, "I don't even care if it's completely different from every song on this record, it's a moment in time." This fearless approach to stylistic cohesion speaks to her maturity as an artist willing to serve the emotional truth rather than arbitrary genre constraints.
"Dust Bowl" confronts listeners with the full Southern Gothic aesthetic brutality – addiction, trauma, and toxic attachment laid bare.
When she sings, "Grew up hard, fell off harder / Cooking our brains smoking that shit your daddy smoked in Vietnam," the generational trauma becomes palpable, connecting personal destruction to broader American decay. It's Anhedönia at her most unflinching, refusing to romanticize the very real damage that shapes her characters.
“A Knock at the Door” functions as a masterful breathing moment, allowing listeners to surface before plunging into the album’s epic conclusion. Here, father issues and Willoughby’s psychological profile regarding family trauma complete not just his characterization but also illuminate the twisted psychology of their connection. The track serves as both a character study and an emotional palate cleanser, showcasing Anhedönia’s sophisticated understanding of album pacing.
"Tempest" emerges seamlessly from the preceding interlude, with an obsessive piano march combining with the persistent sounds of a half-forgotten frequency that bonds with the track in beautifully functional ways.
It stands as an exceptional example of Southern Gothic rock without a discernible chorus—stream-of-consciousness, and disarming in its raw honesty.
The innovation of this track lies in its perspective: for the first time, we hear directly from Willoughby's point of view. In moments that are utterly revelatory and confessional, he tells us, "Don't ask me why I hate myself / As I'm circling the drain / 'Cause death, it takes too long / And I can't wait."
Willoughby's suicidal tendencies resurface constantly throughout the track, nearly completing his psychological portrait and adding devastating depth to our understanding of this doomed relationship.
The album's emotional and sonic climax arrives with "Waco, Texas", a staggering 15-minute opus that never feels indulgent despite its length. It's simply a couple against the entire world, indifferent to outside judgment. But reality won't take long to violently drag them back to earth.
The track journeys through guilt ("Now I'll wear these scars for life / I loved you when it hurt inside to"), admission ("Darling, time may forgive me / But I won't"), love ("I've been picking names for our children"), and the exploration of redemption ("When this is over / Maybe then we'll get some sleep").
Ultimately, redemption never arrives, at least not in the way we expect, and certainly not in this album. This isn't a tragedy in the traditional Aristotelian sense, where catharsis and resolution provide closure. Instead, we're left suspended in the terrible knowledge of what's to come, making the love we witness here all the more heartbreaking for its doomed beauty.
Anhedönia continues to prove herself as an artist who refuses to sacrifice artistic expression to commercial demands. This is evident not just in her willingness to release challenging work like Perverts, but in her commitment to narrative complexity over radio-friendly singles. Willoughby Tucker, I'll Always Love You likely won't achieve mainstream commercial success or radio rotation, but it stands as an impeccable and honest piece of art that demands attention from anyone serious about contemporary music.
Following the album's release, Cain will embark on the Willoughby Tucker Forever tour, bringing these intimate confessions to stages worldwide. For an artist who has spoken openly about her struggles with sudden fame and the "irony epidemic" that has sometimes reduced her art to memes, this tour represents another opportunity to reclaim the sacred space her music deserves.
Willoughby Tucker, I’ll Always Love You stands as proof that some stories are worth telling even when we know how they end—perhaps especially then.
In our current cultural moment of superficial engagement and shortened attention spans, Anhedönia offers the radical proposition that complexity, duration, and emotional difficulty are not obstacles to overcome but essential elements of meaningful art.
This is Southern Gothic storytelling at its finest: beautiful, brutal, and absolutely essential.
