As New England slowly makes its trek to windy gusts and sweater weather, it is imperative that your music-app-of-choice has a perfectly curated playlist suited to the breezy autumn. Personally, I enjoy slower paced songs, with an emphasis on meaningful lyrics that narrate their own stories that are up for interpretation — and few albums fit this description as perfectly as Ethel Cain’s Willoughby Tucker, I’ll Always Love you (WTIALY) does. A beautiful composition of melancholic Americana with elements of folk and gospel, Cain’s release pairs perfectly with our days getting promptly concluded by the October dusk and cinematic walks across campus that feel like they’re right out of a coming-of-age film.
Known professionally as Ethel Cain, Hayden Silas Anhedönia’s recently released studio album WTIALY is comprised of 10 gut-wrenching tracks, with every track painting its own story. Acting as both Anhedönia’s stage name and musical persona, Ethel Cain depicts the narrative of a young woman’s strifes with religious trauma, romantic affairs, and untimely death. WTIALY is Cain’s second studio concept album, where each track unearths Ethel Cain’s loyalty and dependency towards her ex-boyfriend Willoughby Tucker, and serves as a prequel to her first concept album, Preacher’s Daughter. Not only do the mesmerizing instrumentals of WTIALY softly embrace listeners in an emotional fog, Cain’s lyricism explores a tender picture of heartbreak and first love through an all-encompassing tale.
resonances with love and loss
As summer comes to a close and winter slowly rears its frosty head, autumn can be seen as the season of new endings and beginnings — I may even go as far as to say the season of yearning. Ethel Cain’s never-ending devotion to Willoughby Tucker, even as she is brutally murdered by her third and final lover (as lyrically depicted in Cain’s first concept album Preacher’s Daughter) leaves a sickly taste of passion and intensity in every line. WTIALY engages with themes of reminiscence, nostalgia, and regret as Ethel Cain learns to deal with the cold and harsh reality of not being able to fulfill the life with Willoughby Tucker, her first love: a house in Nebraska, a family, etc. The heartbreak of having somebody you truly loved with every fiber of your being, ruthlessly ripped away from your grasp, is something that a lot of us can relate to, especially during the years of college where it is the age of exploration and acceptance of autonomy.
Willoughby Tucker, I’ll Always Love You is an album that encourages listeners to deeply engage with every aspect of its tracks: heavy instrumental layering, slow tempos, strung-out ambient chords. Cain’s Southern Gothicism continues to bring about not the demand, but the allowance, of catharsis.
achingly devoted: last words
Since established that WTIALY is the perfect companion for cozy autumnal nights, certain tracks have resonated with me more than others: “Fuck Me Eyes,” “Dust Bowl,” “Tempest,” and “Waco, Texas.” Each of these tracks grasp a different piece of my identity, whether that be the agony of abandonment from “Dust Bowl,” or the loyalty-to-a-fault that “Tempest” draws on.
In sum, Willoughby Tucker, I’ll Always Love You is an album that is melancholically autumnal in spirit and in structure. For college students cramming for midterms or existential reflections while staring outside their dorm windows, WTIALY combines hurt with comfort, and perhaps shows that even the worst can be reformed into something beautiful.
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