Ethel Cain’s long, hot night of the soul

“This is exactly what it feels like in Florida,” grins Ethel Cain, fanning herself. The heat in Birmingham is torrid; one of Cain’s guitarists has given up his shirt and, from the photographers’ pit, security convey beakers of water into the crowd. Born out of the heat and emotional intensity of the American south, Cain’s music is every bit as humid and heavy as the air in here.

From the opener Sunday Morning onwards, Cain’s gossamer vocals float atop a reverberating thrum, with the tickle of a trap beat briefly cutting through. As the evening goes on, there are more excursions into ambient instrumentals, juddering bass drops and sounds that mine the dread of horror film soundtracks.

Early on, Cain plays American Teenager, her chiming 2022 breakout anthem – unexpectedly channelling US heartland artists such as John Cougar Mellencamp – about the lies sold to US teens: about the wisdom of religion, of joining the military, of the importance of sport. “Hey everybody! Are we ready to have a show?!” Cain asks, perky and personable.

The Florida-born, Baptist-raised artist, real name Hayden Anhedönia, occupies something of a curious position in music. She is a successful, pop-facing singer with big tunes to burn, but one who hails from a leftfield musical background crossing into transgressive art. Notional opposites – melodic and malignant, mainstream and margin-walking – coalesce in her work.

In 2022, Cain’s debut album Preacher’s Daughter gained a rabid cult following. It is a concept album about a young woman who leaves her abusive small-town family, only to end up in a more dire situation. She eventually dies at the hands of a violent partner, who then eats her. But the music itself is not as disturbing as its subject matter.

Cain boosted her profile by touring hard, supporting acts including Florence + the Machine and Boygenius. Barack Obama included American Teenager as one of his favourite songs in his annual end-of-year roundup. “Did not have a former president including my antiwar, antipatriotism fake pop song on his end-of-year list on my 2022 bingo,” Cain posted on social media.

By 2025, a vinyl re-release of Preacher’s Daughter made Ethel Cain the first transgender artist to appear in the US top 10. Its most harrowing track, Ptolemaea – named for a circle of hell in Dante’s Inferno – provides the night’s most overwhelming few minutes. Cain begs a fictional assailant for mercy. “Stop!” screams the entire audience, as the band drop a hundredweight of guitars and strobes strafe the venue. For anyone with trauma to expurgate, this is an arena of pure catharsis.

In early 2025, Cain released Perverts, an often instrumental album of claustrophobic drones and vaporous lo-fi sketches. Tonight’s support act, the Scottish small pipes player Brìghde Chaimbeul, whose electronically assisted piping goes down well with the crowd, underlines Cain’s commitment to this experimental move away from pop. Excerpts from Perverts, meanwhile, join the dots between Angelo Badalamenti, who composed the Twin Peaks score, and the doom drone band, Sunn O))).

Then came Cain’s second full-length album, Willoughby Tucker, I’ll Always Love You – a prequel, of sorts, to Preacher’s Daughter, fleshing out Cain’s backstory. Dust Bowl, a love song, finds Cain tonight lit in blinding orange, singing of two lovers “cooking our brains, smoking that shit your daddy did in Vietnam”. Distortion and bass mimic the hit, as well as one of Cain’s most pervasive themes: how the sins of the fathers – the mark of Cain – are impossible to escape.

Controversy clouded Willoughby’s rollout, as resurfaced tweets presented Cain, whose social media presence could be edgy, in an unedifying light. In a long statement, Cain addressed her past desire to shock; she apologised unreservedly for using racist language. The singer also expressed bafflement at some of the wild accusations levied at her online. “I am not a violent misogynist fetishising the female experience,” she wrote, “I am not the creator of child pornography, nor am I a paedophile, a zoophile, or a porn-addicted incest fetishist. I urge you to recognise the patterns of a transphobic/otherwise targeted smear campaign, especially in this political day and age.”

Further addressing her actions and regrets in the New York Times last summer, Cain appeared to have weathered that online storm. She is still touring Willoughby far and wide in 2026 to crowds who follow her into a place where transgressive nightmares coexist alongside pop dreams.

This long, hot night of the soul ends with Sun Bleached Flies, another swooning ballad in which her protagonist mourns lost love and yearns for escape. “God loves you, but not enough to save you,” the audience howls back at Cain. “So, baby girl, good luck taking care of yourself.” You don’t need to have been rejected by religion to hear the universal hope and pragmatism in Cain’s words.

Photograph by Antonio Olmos for The Observer