The five best unreleased Ethel Cain demos
Sometimes, it only takes one album to create a sensation. For Ethel Cain, it was her debut album, Preacher’s Daughter, that shot her to notoriety. Released in 2022, the concept album is a stunning horror story of love, trauma, and cannibalism. But Cain, real name Hayden Silas Anhedönia, had been working away long before then. Building her signature sound and crafting her artistic world through a lengthy series of demos and unreleased tracks, some of her best work exists in the archive.
Because a record like Preacher’s Daughter takes time and skill to come to life. Through Cain’s demos, it’s like hearing the world of that record slowly come together, whether that be through the levelling up of her instrumentals from sparse guitar strums into full-scale productions or the early sketches of the story her debut holds. Some of the tracks firmly exist within the lore of the record, building on the story of Cain’s tragic fate by providing context for her heartbreaks or her family’s generational curse.
But some are merely golden nuggets of power and potential, showing precisely why the musician became a cultishly beloved underground figure. When these demos began doing the rounds of Soundcloud as she released her debut EPs, Cain quickly gathered a dedicated following of fans hooked in and eagerly waiting for more of her storytelling abilities.
Now, Cain’s cult is bigger than ever. Gracing festival stages worldwide and seeing her streaming numbers skyrocket as tracks like ‘Crush’ and ‘American Teenager’ captured mass attention, her star is well and truly rising. But as we wait for the hotly anticipated follow-up to Preacher’s Daughter and wonder what might come next in her cinematic musical world, now is the best time to dive back into the demos that started it all.
The five best unreleased Ethel Cain demos:
‘Dust Bowl’
Let’s begin with the best. ‘Dust Bowl’ is an unreleased track with so much power and potential that Cain chooses it to open her shows, a hopeful sign that maybe one day, it’ll get an official release. Recorded during the making of Preacher’s Daughter, it feels like a middle ground between ‘House In Nebraska’ and ‘Western Nights’, as if capturing the moment where the character of Cain meets her second love, the rebellious bad boy who would break her heart.
It’s the musician at her greatest on every level. The verses are chugging lyrics that meld together poetry with vivid storytelling, crafting a world that feels so real that you exist in it for the nearly five-minute run time. Her vocal performance is emotive, switching between grit and velvet croons. Then, musically, it moves between her two points of balladic devastation and thundering rock, especially when the track is performed live with its new thundering drum climax. All mixed together with its tale of captivating love in a run-down small town, it’s an essential listen for fans wanting more of Ethel Cain’s world.
‘Wrestling In Dirt Pits’
“My son of a preacher, sinful as ever / Lies like he does and I’m still all over him,” Cain sings in another stunning alternative ballad that channels sexuality, religious iconography and trauma into her own unique world. Reminiscent of her earlier work on her EPs Inbred and Golden Age, the build of the track is simple with little more than an electric guitar and drums, but with lyrics like this and a voice like that, she’s never needed much more.
However, ‘Wrestling In Dirt Pits’ could hold an interesting position in the lore of Ethel Cain. While Preacher’s Daughter tells the story of the child, fans have theorised that this track might be an insight into the Preacher’s wife and whether this is an early draft of Cain’s future contemplations about the mother in the story. Singing about the son of a preacher and the hopes that generational trauma might leave her love alone and allow their relationship to go uncursed, perhaps this was her mother’s futile prayer before Cain’s own fate entered the story.
‘Selby Wall’
“There comes a point in every girl’s life where she just wants to go fucking feral,” Cain begins in ‘Selby Wall’, a track that stands out as something different in her vast well of tracks and unreleased demos. It’s a song that exists outside of the storyline laid out in her debut album. Instead, it was demoed originally for her Golden Age EP back in 2019 before the character’s plot was captured.
While the instrumental is sweet and simple, the song is packed with pure, undiluted rage. A rage so powerful that it becomes murderous. Navigating the hell of abuse, the track delves into a desire for freedom and revenge that’s held down by the emotional manipulation and Stockholm syndrome that comes with the circumstance. The track was reportedly inspired by the story of Aileen Wuornos, the serial killer who was raised in a home of intense sexual and physical abuse until she eventually went, as Cain puts it, “fucking feral”. Cain has never shied away from writing horror into her lyrics, but this one is on another level.
‘Waco, Texas’
Dedicated to Willoughby, the lost lover that Ethel Cain is mourning as the story of Preacher’s Daughter unfolds, ‘Waco, Texas’ captures the beginning of the heartbreaking story held in ‘A House in Nebraska’.
It’s a tale of first loves and utter devotion as Cain attempts to keep hold of a love that is going bad and slipping away. “Now I’ll wear these scars for life,” she sings as a foreshadowing for the story that follows on the album, adding devastatingly, “I loved you when it hurt inside to / But in the low light / You know I’d do anything for you.” At six minutes long, it’s another storytelling opus, but it feels revelatory to the world of her debut album.
‘Crying During Sex’
A push-and-pull, cat-and-mouse love story set in Cain’s repressive religious world, ‘Crying During Sex’ captures the desire and fear of attraction. Recorded as a bonus track for her 2021 Inbred project, it feels like the more seductive, secretive side to ‘Crush’, taking her fancies from the school year into the tense atmosphere of the church.
Musically, it’s another simply built track. But it’s when you hear these more stripped-back demo tracks that Cain’s insane talent and potential come through. It’s easy to see how she became an underground sensation as tracks like this did the rounds on SoundCloud. Even after she levelled up and expanded her sound by the time her debut came out, the root of her storytelling prowess, sharply emotional lyrics, and cinematic atmosphere came right back here with these early tracks.
