The Mainsheet

Album: Preacher’s Daughter by Ethel Cain

Intro: In her debut concept album following a preacher’s daughter who
runs away from home and ends up cannibalized, Ethel Cain explores the
unexplainable, all while maintaining her hauntingly familiar songwriting
and vocal genius.

“American Teenager”

In an almost satirically upbeat and heavily produced track two, Cain takes inspiration from The Cranberries to set the scene for our preacher’s daughter, who resides in a small Nebraska town. (“Grew up under yellow light on
the street / putting too much faith in the make-believe and another high school football team.”) This common “small town” trope is eventually overshadowed by Cain’s anti-war sentiment, criticizing the culture of violence and hatred that America fosters, and how the next generation must face the con-
sequences. (“Say what you want and say it like you mean it with
your fists for once / A long, cold war with your kids at the front.”) To Cain’s surprise, this song made it onto former President Barack Obama’s Top Songs of 2022.

“Sun Bleached Flies”

If the soft intro of this penultimate track tugs at your heartstrings on the first listen, you’re in for a rough seven minutes. Through intensely vulnerable lyrics and layered vocals, Cain explores our preacher’s daughter’s complicated feelings
around faith after her own death. (“What I wouldn’t give to be in church this Sunday / listening to the choir so heartfelt, all singing / God loves you, but not enough to save you.”) Although it’s clear that she feels some sense of acceptance
by the end (“If it’s meant to be, then it will be / I forgive it all as it comes back to me”), there is still one thing unclear: Is there an afterlife waiting
for her? The preacher’s daughter’s complicated relationship with God, even after she dies, begs the question of whether she finds peace in a new life or absolutely nothing at all. Nonetheless, the subjectivity of the ending reinforces the idea that we will never know what waits for us at our end, and faith is about surrendering to this fact and understanding that, again, whatever is meant to be, will be.