Willoughby Tucker, I'll Always Love You

It’s the softest of her records, yet perhaps the most emotionally violent. .... If this truly is the end of her story, it’s hard to imagine a more heartfelt way to lay Ethel Cain to rest.

As Ethel stands broken, forlorn and alone, Hayden rises stronger as one of the very best in storytelling and atmosphere.

Ethel Cain is the most important artist in the world right now, and finally she has the album to prove it.

Ethel Cain’s debut was a feat of artistry. This is a feat of musicianship.

Many of these songs have been performed live for years, their demos leaked online and lyrics widely dissected. However, they borrow the tone of the lurid Perverts, presenting a more confident and less artificial vision than Preacher’s Daughter.

Like many of Anhedönia’s recordings, Willoughby Tucker is an occasionally uncomfortable listen, but for the better. Ultimately, it mirrors trauma, suffering, devotion, and the need for comfort with a vital authenticity. There are very few—if any other—artists creating work this obscenely profound in their mid-20s.

It isn’t trying to alienate anyone or push them away (as can be argued of Perverts), but it’s still a challenging, thorny, and layered work worthy of one of the more interesting and hard-to-define artists working today.

While it's highlighted by evocative tracks like "Fuck Me Eyes" and its mix of smooth synths and dissonant fuzz, and the more intimate "Dust Bowl" ("I knew it was love/When I rode home crying"), like any concept album worth its salt, Willoughby Tucker, I'll Always Love You is best heard in its (73-minute) entirety.

Cain’s vocals are unparalleled, as silky and unblemished as white satin ribbon. The guitars are immaculate, burning through the murk like white phosphorus work lights, leaving you seeing spots and stars. It’s another ambitious entry in an increasingly flawless discography.

Willoughby Tucker is the most complete, emotional and addictive Ethel Cain record to date.

It’s an utterly cohesive record, perhaps to a fault; the individual parts end up consumed by the whole. If you vibe with it, though, Anhedonia has made an album that has real depths to explore – it’s just a matter of finding the right frequency.

Long, steady, deliberate, and full of wide-open sonic spaces, these songs tap heavily into ambient country/western influences and unfurl like hazy, sepia-tinged memories of endless summer afternoons.

On Willoughby Tucker, I’ll Always Love You Cain has once again been able to translate incredibly personal experiences into deeply universal feelings that come from young love and heartbreak.

Anhedönia's gifts for storytelling - part Flannery O'Connor, part David Lynch - are compelling enough, but the music is equally stunning, a mix of shoegaze, gothic country and doom metal. [Sep 2025, p.29]

Willoughby Tucker markedly lacks the spark of excitement that might catalyze a zeitgeist. The most shocking thing about this album, especially after hearing Perverts earlier this year, is how unprovocative the album is. But the Ethel Cain project isn’t necessarily meant to be solely agitative. There is a calmer side that lays the foundation for everything that comes before and will come after.

Sprawling as it is, the project, so far, coheres around its defining theme of fragility—of life, of love, and of the American dream. You’d be forgiven for not getting all of that just from listening. While loaded with backstory, these records subsist more on ambiance than on plot.