Willoughby Tucker, I’ll Always Love You

Willoughby Tucker, I’ll Always Love You was the soul sister to Ethel Cain’s tremendously well-recieved Preacher’s Daughter. The record featured her iconic slow-paced ambient, lyricless droning interludes while still maintaining the slowcore sad-girl storytelling pop core that made Preacher’s Daughter such a hit, solidifying Ethel Cain’s talent for haunting us so serenely. While there is not quite as much storytelling - nor as much gore or dystopian themes laced throughout - Willoughby Tucker, I’ll Always Love You still feels like a story. Being less explicit actually makes the album feel more mature than Preacher’s Daughter, aided also by Ethel’s matured vocals and production on the record. She is so controlled, not laying everything out on the table but rather evoking emotions through sounds than outlandish writing. Her ballads are few and far between (perhaps maybe too much so, as it would have been nice to have a ballad towards the end of the album), but they were placed perfectly in a controlled way.

I enjoyed the duality of her goth fairy vocals embedded into deep, grunge guitar on tracks like Fuck Me Eyes as well as into soft-stringed songs like A Knock At The Door. Nettles is another track that has notably taken the world by storm. I admit the writing and layered strings (especially the banjo) create a remarkably dreamy hopeless soundscape. Raio Towers, too, however, is an incredible piece of atmospheric sound that evokes arguably just as much emotion - and transitions effortlessly into Tempest. Some people also feel as though Waco, Texas (the closing track) was too long. While I agree 15 minute songs should generally be reserved for the likes of Pink Floyd, I have no problem with the track or it’s length. It puts on display what Ethel Cain does best: slow builds. It felt like an appropriate way, both lyrically and sonically, to close the album with self-reflection, and acceptance.

Overall, the songs worked undeniably well together, making the album feel coherent… perhaps too much so at times. The record felt overly sonically homogenous at times. I believe it could have benefited from just one track of a higher gear. Nonetheless, Ethel Cain retains more sonic depth than other slowcore pop girlies (aka Lana Del Rey, cough cough).