Hayden Anhedönia has had full creative control over the life and times of Ethel Cain, the driving vehicle of her musical output. Her upcoming album Willoughby Tucker is the latest extension of the Ethel Cain universe and operates as a prequel to her previous release Preacher’s Daughter. It takes place in 1986 during the summer, warm months, during which the teenage character falls in love for the first time. The record was a way for Anhedönia to work through her own complicated emotions around love during pivotal coming-of-age years, but filtered through her real-life experience of entering her first relationship at the age of 27.
“Love was always my final frontier,” Anhedönia told The Guardian in a recent interview. “I never explored it. I never processed anything. I never progressed past the idea of love that I had as a teenager.” This proved to be a roadblock as she delved deeper into the album creation process. The prequel, she said, was necessary for tying up some loose ends within the story and herself. “That Ethel’s entire story began with the love that she had for this boy … It felt like it needed telling,” she added. “And come hell or high water, it was going to get told. It was practically seeping out of me.”
The musician tried to keep the line between herself and Ethel separate, telling herself that “it’s all fictional,” she said. “But sometimes I’ll catch a lyric and it’ll resonate exactly with how I’m feeling. And I remember that it’s coming from me.” It was a grueling process, but coming out on the other side of it, Anhedönia realized that she had taught herself a lot, or at least Ethel did. “I see Ethel Cain as a piece of me that I separate from myself and discard, so that I can make good decisions in life,” she said. “If Preacher’s Daughter was my learning experience of what not to do with trauma and healing, Willoughby Tucker has been my experience of what not to do in love.”
She added, “Ethel Cain lived and died loving and praying to be loved back. The entire Preacher’s trilogy is centred around love. Love lost, love gained, love perverted, love stolen. Love is everything to us. It doesn’t matter what you love or who you love, but that you love something – and that love is what propels you forward every day. For better or worse, I think that is a beautiful thing.”
Earlier this month, Anhedönia addressed another extension of her healing journey after she admitted to using racial slurs in old social media posts made when she was trying to be as “inflammatory and controversial as possible,” she said in a statement. “All I can say is that I am truly sorry from the bottom of my heart, to anyone who read it then and to anyone reading it now. Any way you feel about me moving forward is valid,” Anhedönia wrote. “As I move forward through my life, I aim to use my platform for good, for change, and for progress. I believe it’s important to atone not through words alone, but through actions.”
Willoughby Tucker is set for release on Aug. 8. It follows the singer-songwriter’s latest album Perverts, a standalone release that arrived in January.