If Ethel Cain is dead, then you might want to check out Reverend Kristin Michael Hayter
Here lies Ethel Cain. With the release of Willoughby Tucker, I’ll Always Love You, Hayden Anhedönia marked the end of her exploration of Ethel, the character that coloured her first two albums.
Who knows what will come next? There could be a long drought ahead.
“Preacher’s Daughter was speaking on my experience in the church and as a child,” Anhedönia said on the Popcast about how the character of Ethel Cain both interacts with her own personal life in her work. Of her latest release, she added, “Willoughby Tucker is more of my insecurities and frustrations and fears and inadequacies in love. And so it’s just as personal, just on a different tip.”
But in both instances, her two albums are concept albums. On her debut, the story of Ethel Cain’s death is told. On her latest release, Anhedönia returned to her years earlier, exploring the relationship that initially began leading her down a dark path.
While they integrate emotionally with her life, they’re storytelling pieces as she explained, “All of this, since the debut, has to do with Ethel Cain, the granddaughter’s character,” before revealing, “So we are now, after this record is over, officially closing that chapter.”
So, Ethel Cain is done. It’s over. What now?
The ruling theory is that we’re moving onto something new. Anhedönia has repeatedly talked about wanting to explore different characters in this story, especially Ethel Cain’s grandmother. It’s clear there is more to be delved into and that chances are, this isn’t the end of this world. But for now, it is, so why not move on to someone new?
Why not move on to Reverend Kristin Michael Hayter? In an instant, just seeing the name, it’s clear that the two artists move in the same world. So much of Cain’s debut especially was exploring religious trauma as the character is born into a strict religious family with a preacher father and even the deeply, and darkly, spiritual idea that she is cursed somehow. Even her choice to give that character the surname Cain holds a religious connection, drawing a line of reference to Cain, the firstborn of Adam and Eve, punished by God and considered the originator of evil, violence, or greed.
As suggested by the moniker, Reverend Kristin Michael Hayter’s music explores similar themes, using religion as both a subject matter but also a sonic inspiration as so many of the songs on Saved! are inspired by gospel music, but specifically, the kind of deep south, deeply creepy, distorted and uncanny hymns that Anhedönia is clearly influenced by. So much of Saved! holds the energy of a haunted record playing on repeat out of a broken church window into an empty, dusty town during the apocalypse, so if you like songs like ‘Perverts’ or ‘Ptolomea’, you’ll be locked in.
But it goes beyond sonic inspiration, the fact that the two share influences, or even the similarity in the fact that Reverend Kristin Michael Hayter is also one of the monikers or characters that Hayter adopts, including Lingua Ignota. The intrigue in her work, and the reason why she feels so ready for Cain fans to discover, is the storytelling element, the intrigue and the way that ties to real world emotions.
More and more, Anhedönia became more open about the ways that the Ethel Cain story was deeply personal and rooted in her own trauma and survival. Upon the release of the new record, she wrote on Instagram that the album “still feels raw and too close to home.”
She added, “I realized I don’t hate this record, I’m just still overwhelmed by how real it feels. This is the scariest record I think I’ve ever made.”
It is obvious that Ethel Cain became an exercise in purging and processing, and so is the Reverend Kristin Michael Hayter project. She calls her tracks “survival anthems” as they dive viscerally into the topic of abuse, but she refuses to make that palatable. Instead, she leans into the unsettling and the way that discomfort can be cathartic. Often, she leans into the outright violent, especially on the Lingua Ignota, which in moments can be a tough listen with graphic lyricism that’s as unsettling as it is deeply powerful.
In both of those projects, as both Lingua Ignota and the Reverend, Hayter proves to be a poignant artist. It’s music that makes you shut up and truly pulls a reaction from you. If what you like about Ethel Cain is the reaction it elicits in you, whether that be fear, upset or catharsis, there’s more of it here.
