<p>Ethel Cain's lilting voice and intimate adult alternative songs navigate melancholy moods and dreamy, reverb-drenched atmospheres. After using other aliases as a teen, she emerged as Ethel Cain with a series of
... <p>Ethel Cain's lilting voice and intimate adult alternative songs navigate melancholy moods and dreamy, reverb-drenched atmospheres. After using other aliases as a teen, she emerged as Ethel Cain with a series of EPs in the late 2010s and early 2020s before presenting her full-length debut, Preacher's Daughter, in 2022.</p>
<p>Born in Tallahassee to a church deacon and his wife, Cain was homeschooled throughout her formative years in northern Florida and sang in the church choir from a young age. Soon after discovering the music of Florence + the Machine, Cain wrote her first album's worth of material on a Casio keyboard around the age of 15. Though she left the church at 16 and came out as a transgender woman at the age of 20, gospel hymns, along with alternative music, pop, and classic rock, would help inform her songwriting. First recording under the aliases White Silas and Atlas, she released her first mixtape at the age of 19 before making her Ethel Cain debut with the song "Bruises" a couple years later in August 2019. The EPs Carpet Bed and Golden Age quickly followed in September and December of that year. After connecting with style-adjacent singer/songwriter Nicole Dollanganger on social media, Cain opened a show for her in Chicago, also in 2019.</p>
<p>In mid-2020, Cain moved from Florida to Indiana, where she recorded her third EP, Inbred. It included the single "Michelle Pfeiffer" featuring rapper Lil Aaron. She issued a cover of Britney Spears' "Everytime" in early 2022 before releasing her first album that May. Titled Preacher's Daughter, it arrived on her own Daughters of Cain label.</p>
<p>Marcy Donelson<br />AllMusic.com</p>
