{"id":12903,"date":"2025-06-13T10:24:45","date_gmt":"2025-06-13T09:24:45","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.themanchesterreview.co.uk\/?p=12903"},"modified":"2025-06-13T10:24:45","modified_gmt":"2025-06-13T09:24:45","slug":"ethel-cain-nettles-reviewed-by-edith-powell","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.themanchesterreview.co.uk\/?p=12903","title":{"rendered":"Ethel Cain, Nettles, reviewed by Edith Powell"},"content":{"rendered":"

Ethel Cain\u2019s preview single delivers everything steadfast listeners were hoping for; creating a spellbinding, bittersweet world of <\/span>catharsis<\/span>, melancholy, and <\/span>reluctant hope. <\/span>A masterful<\/span> addition to a tragic story. <\/span><\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/em><\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

‘Nettles’ | Ethel Cain |\u00a0Willoughby Tucker, I Will Always Love You<\/em>
Reviewed by Edith Powell<\/span><\/span><\/strong><\/p>\n

\u2018Nettles\u2019 is Ethel Cain\u2019s debut single for her upcoming sophomore album, <\/span>Willoughby Tucker, I Will Always Love You, <\/span><\/i>out this August. The album is a follow-up to her widely acclaimed debut album, <\/span>Preacher\u2019s Daughter, <\/span><\/i>which tells the Southern Gothic story of a character called Ethel Cain (whom the artist has dubbed her stage name) who grows up in the American South. She suffers the abuse of her father, watches the failures of her mother and the Church to save her, and falls in love with Willoughby Tucker. In her song \u2018House in Nebraska\u2019, Cain details how this relationship fell apart, blaming herself, and how she longs to return to the house where they lay together. The first half of the album reflects on this relationship, as well as the sexually abusive relationship with her father, and her contentious feelings about religion. The second half involves Ethel running away and meeting a man called Isaiah. There is a brief respite of hope for Ethel in \u2018Thoroughfare\u2019, a plucky, sensual, voyage of Southern cynical love, before Isaiah drugs Ethel, pimps her as a prostitute, kills her, and eats her remains. It\u2019s horrific, yet it\u2019s so beautifully crafted, written, and sung. We go from instrumental catharsis as Ethel ascends to heaven in \u2018Televangelism\u2019, to guttural, horror-esque songs such as \u2018Ptolemea\u2019, to beautiful, sombre, reflective, symbolic masterpieces like \u2018Sun-bleached flies\u2019, to upbeat blends of hope and despair in \u2018American Teenager\u2019. It\u2019s an album that\u2019s wholeheartedly worth listening to all the way through (several times if possible).\u00a0<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

So, long-awaited has Cain\u2019s follow-up album been to PD<\/em> and fans have been excited to learn that it will be centred around the mysterious relationship between Ethel and Willoughby. Our first glimpse of the album is through \u2018Nettles\u2019. Cain is no stranger to breaking the three-minute music industry standard; this single reaches a total of eight. I believe each minute added is entirely necessary to the picture Cain masterfully paints. But I\u2019m getting ahead of myself here.\u00a0<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\u2018Nettles\u2019 opens with a careful, eerie, continuous base sound with different instruments and melodies interweaving. Each new addition adds a new atmosphere and feeling, the listener having gone on an emotional journey before the lyrics have even started. Strings and violins create a sense of a new, scared confrontation with hope as her love for Willoughby gives her respite from the horrors of her family life. Just as we, the listeners, grasp at this inkling of hope, it deflates slightly as a sombre guitar melody is introduced. There are beautiful mixtures of minor and major keys to create a blissful, longing, uncertain sound. Ethel\u2019s silky voice brings me back to the world and aura of <\/span>Preacher\u2019s Daughter,<\/span><\/i> as she describes a perhaps real, perhaps imagined scenario of Willoughby\u2019s death and spirals at the thought of losing him.\u00a0<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

As she continues, her voice echoes and repeats, creating a resounding, wistful, almost cathartic feeling. Ethel repeats how she is scared to \u2018wake up on [her] own\u2019 again. As a follow-up album, WT<\/em> works brilliantly with what the listener presumably knows about the life and death of Ethel Cain. All we really know about Willoughby is that he will leave her alone, as she chimes again and again in \u2018House in Nebraska\u2019. Her anxiety suddenly doesn\u2019t feel so silly to us, and we grow ever more intrigued to find out why Willoughby will leave Ethel, and why she blames herself. Just as the thought of losing Willoughby haunts Ethel, does our knowledge of Ethel\u2019s outcome haunt the entire song.\u00a0<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

In PD<\/em>, Ethel sings about how she is scared about all the ways she is like, and wishes to be like, her father, who she now knows was awful to her growing up. Yet, she now relishes being \u2018half of\u2019 Willoughby. In my opinion, this continues the motif of how Ethel is formed and shaped by her hometown, her religion, and the men around her because of growing up sheltered and controlled. However, this type of influence stings only a little, the song being called \u2018Nettles\u2019 to show how her love only stings when she is fully submerged within it. This is reinforced by the repeated line \u2018to love me is to suffer me\u2019, a sentiment that may be true due to the inevitable demise of their relationship, but also something learnt time and time again from Ethel\u2019s family and religion.\u00a0<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

After this, gentle drums kick in, accompanied by gorgeous imagery of nature. Plucky guitar and languid, bittersweet violins return. Ethel tells Willoughby, \u2018you\u2019ll go fight a war, I\u2019ll go missing\u2019. From her PD<\/em> song \u2018American Teenager\u2019, we know that Ethel is no stranger to men leaving to fight a war and never coming back. By assigning these fates to one another, Ethel lays out the gender roles that her environment has set up. Additionally, we know that Ethel will eventually go missing when she leaves home, her face ending up on \u2018milk cartons\u2019 in the song \u2018Strangers\u2019. However, it could be argued that Ethel would still disappear into her role as a woman, just as she saw her mother do in the song \u2018sun-bleached flies\u2019 as she describes how older women fade away in her hometown. Either way, Ethel will disappear, leaving her with a lack of control of her body, her life, and the world around her.\u00a0<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

The song, whilst cathartic, still connects us with the complex feelings of dread and sorrow that mar the life of Ethel Cain. She tells Willoughby how \u2018the picture on the wall you\u2019re scared of looks just like you\u2019. The cover of PD<\/em> is a posed picture of Ethel underneath a portrait above her on the wall depicting a male figure. The man could be Jesus, it could be her father, yet the ambiguity lends itself to a reading of an abstract, patriarchal figure that always looms behind Ethel. The fact that she sees how Willoughby echoes a similar portrait in his own house displays how the young lovers are trapped by their elders and are destined to fall into the roles assigned by them. Ethel also expresses how she would rather \u2018bleed [and] hurt, the way that boys do\u2019, implying that to disappear, to be posed and controlled by the picture on the wall, by the man (whether it be her father or her pimp) behind the camera, is worse than being the shadowy figure in the portrait, or the dying soldier in the news.\u00a0<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

She then acknowledges that Willoughby is right, that they should stop watching the news as she\u2019s \u2018never seen brown eyes look so blue\u2019. This line is accompanied by a gorgeous crescendo that builds again into the chorus. Again, as Ethel does, the listener must grapple with the complex and distressing realities of the characters and the immediate feelings of love and hope that Ethel experiences with Willoughby. Ethel can see from his eyes that he is hurting, yet the swelling music displays how she still relishes in his beauty; she can\u2019t believe the love she feels.\u00a0<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

The chorus is a cathartic masterclass in emotive musical composition. The song bursts with relief, with joy, whilst maintaining the blend of doom and hope. Voices upon voices layer upon each other, harmonising and creating a beautiful song. The violins are so selectively put in; each time they make a real impact. Ethel begins to dream about their wedding and how all the pain she feels now will be worth it for their future. Again, this part feels so conflicting. The music still echoes the resilient hope, yet even Ethel herself knows that this might not last. This song is a fantastic expression of love within tragedy. As the song nears its close, the voices and instruments become angelic. The violins finally burst forth with the focus they\u2019ve been demanding. The song ends with \u2018to love me is to suffer me\u2019, further amplifying how every feeling of love is met with a sting.\u00a0<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Ultimately, \u2018Nettles\u2019 brings everything listeners loved about PD<\/em> while adding new elements, feelings, and complexity as it focuses on one of the first and perhaps only feelings of love Cain feels in her life. The song is so listenable. I find new things to love about it each time I listen, while being able to lose myself in the feelings produced by the compositions. I am so excited for Cain\u2019s new album, coming out this August, and I implore you to become as invested in this world as the song demands.\u00a0<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/span>Reviewed by Edith Powell<\/span><\/i>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Ethel Cain\u2019s preview single delivers everything steadfast listeners were hoping for; creating a spellbinding, bittersweet world of catharsis, melancholy, and reluctant hope. A masterful addition to a tragic story. \u00a0 ‘Nettles’ | Ethel Cain |\u00a0Willoughby Tucker, I Will Always Love YouReviewed by Edith Powell \u2018Nettles\u2019 is Ethel Cain\u2019s debut single for her upcoming sophomore album, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":45,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_is_tweetstorm":false,"jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":[]},"categories":[15,283],"tags":[],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"yoast_head":"\nEthel Cain, Nettles, reviewed by Edith Powell - The Manchester Review<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.themanchesterreview.co.uk\/?p=12903\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Ethel Cain, Nettles, reviewed by Edith Powell - The Manchester Review\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Ethel Cain\u2019s preview single delivers everything steadfast listeners were hoping for; creating a spellbinding, bittersweet world of catharsis, melancholy, and reluctant hope. 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