Welcome back. If you’ve made it through the first half of this story and lived to tell the tale, prepare yourself because the last seven tracks don’t just pick up where we left off, they chuck you headfirst into the abyss. This is where things get darker, louder, and unbearably real. So if you’re still with me, let’s keep going.
- Thoroughfare
This track has the melody of a country song. It is very different from the rest on the album. It is optimistic and upbeat in the melody and the lyrics as well. This song talks about exciting countryside adventures and traveling to the sound of your heart. Ethel is wandering along a highway when she is picked up by Isaiah. He agrees to give her a ride from texas to california. Ethel Cain shares her end goal for her travels singing, “loves’ out there and I cant leave it be”. As the 10 minute track goes on Ethel and Isaiah end up falling in love as she sings “For the first time since I was a child I could see a man who wasn’t angry”. She finally feels safe. But is she?
- Gibson Girl
This incredibly angry and sexually charged song shows us what Ethel and Isaiahs relationship has become. Isaiah has sold her into sex work as well as picked up a drug addiction. Ethel finds a strange comfort in this because it is as far as she has been able to get from her past life. Yes she has escaped one form of abuse, but she has fallen right back into another. It is familiar but different and she is addicted to it. She sings of the danger in the line “you wanna get these clothes off and hurt me, and if you hate me please don’t tell me”. This song dives into the patriarchy and the male gaze being weaponized as Ethel tries to see her abuse as empowering or “iconic”.
- Ptolemaea
So this track is some seriously messed up stuff. It is named after one of the levels of hell in Dante’s Inferno. Isaiah, while under the influence of drugs, abuses Ethel throughout the track and she pleads with him to stop. Her blood curdling scream is when he ultimately kills her. An eerie voice follows with the words “I am the face of love’s rage” as he continues to attack her, even after her death.
- August Underground
This track is filled with nothing but low guitar reverb and crying wails that sound like something straight out of a horror film. It encapsulates the feeling and scene of what Isaish has done to Ethel and the scene afterwards.
- Televangelism
The second of the two instrumental tracks is the complete opposite of the last one. It is quite beautiful and angelic for the listener after the previous ones. It is supposed to represent the soul of Ethel Cain ultimately ascending to (presumably heaven) after all the pain and suffering she endured.
- Sunbleached Flies
Ethel returns to us in this track to sing from above. She still struggles with her relationship with god singing “god loves you but not enough to save you”. She accepts that after everything, she still holds her faith close, singing “If it’s meant to be then it will be, so I met him there and told him I believe.” By the end of the track, Ethel seems to have reunited with God and made peace with her unfortunate demise.
- Strangers
In the final song, Ethel gives more horrifying details on her death and post-death. She sings about her struggles with Stockholm syndrome to Isaiah. If you listen to this song on the surface it simply sounds like a love song with lyrics like “I just wanted to be yours”. If you listen closely you will hear the clues that suggest her fate and how she was eventually cannibalized by Izaish. In the final words, she calls to her mother begging her to not “think about it too hard or you’ll never sleep a wink at night again”, meaning she wanted her to accept the death of her daughter.
So there it is, the final descent into the darkness that is Preacher’s Daughter. If the first half cracked open the door to Ethel Cain’s world, the second half kicks it clean off the hinges and leaves you crawling through the wreckage. It’s devastating, beautiful, and disturbingly unforgettable. Sweet dreams.
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