Culture
Ethel Cain entrances the AE Pavilion in Pittsburgh
By: Nicholas Kobe
Posted on:
PITTSBURGH, Pennsylvania (WOUB) – In the 2020’s few artists have soared with high concept, dark themes, and musical experimentation in the way that Hayden Silas Anhedönia, AKA Ethel Cain, has. With two incredible albums now under her belt, Ethel Cain’s The Willoughby Tucker Forever Tour seeks to translate that studio magic to a live audience. Perhaps not surprisingly, considering Cain’s consistent musical track record, this bar is not only met but surpassed.
Despite a disappointing opener, Ethel Cain’s performance quickly became etched into my brain as one of the most cohesive and spectacular performances I’ve seen, not only from a young artist, but ever.
With the diversity of Ethel Cain’s musical influences, picking an opener that’d fit at least some of her sounds shouldn’t be hard. However, 9Million, the chosen opener for this tour, committed the one sin that runs against the thing that binds all of Cain’s musical influences. Cain is always interesting; 9Million never was.
The first thing you notice about 9Million is that it feels like there are nine million people on stage. Really, it’s just seven, two dedicated guitar players, two singer/guitar players (acoustic and electric), a bassist, a drummer, and a keyboardist/percussionist.
This huge band then proceeds to do nothing interesting with that throughout their entire set. From my perspective, with all these guitars, parts were always being doubled up to no real benefit. Even with a solo, there’d be two rhythm parts on the same chords behind it, plus the bass on the root note. It was simply too much without ever taking full advantage of what could be so cool about adding countermelodies, rhythms, or harmonies.
On top of that, the keyboard, acoustic guitar, and percussion were drowned by the electronic instruments. While an overbearing mix may be standard for some shoegaze, it basically rendered a chunk of the band useless, which is especially painful when, as addressed earlier, the instruments we are hearing are lacking flavor.
What could have been a chance to showcase some oddball talent was squandered, and instead, we get a basic, shoegazey set, complete with all the annoying insistence that everyone in the crowd smoke weed. It’s like a middle-of-the-road college band stumbled into the tour of one of music’s most interesting minds, creating a mismatch that was jarring to say the least.
Luckily, even with this major disappointment, I still had faith in Cain to deliver a worthy performance, and of course, once she hit the stage, she exceeded my every expectation. Cain’s set began with an extremely long, dramatic intro as the backing band took their places, and a smoke machine billowed clouds across the set.
With a mic stand in the shape of a power line, some artificial hedges behind her, and giant branches hanging from the ceiling, the stage felt like a slightly ominous forest in the middle of nowhere. Anyone familiar with Cain’s music knows that all of this, aesthetically, is in line with the singer’s dark, southern gothic work. As this “setting” builds, Cain emerges from the fog like a spirit, before letting her haunting voice begin Willoughby’s Theme.
Ethel is pitch-perfect to the record, and her set is almost a direct one-to-one translation of the combination of musical beauty, overlaying immense pain and melancholy that makes her work so captivating. For a more “whisper” singer, like Cain, I think she was mic’d perfectly, so that she was audible without having to push outside the softness required for some of the tracks.
Cain was able to maintain a dark, almost somber aura around her throughout the whole main set, not only through her commitment to the bit in her lack of movement, but through ingenious use of lighting. Cain was able to strategically light herself from the back, casting her entirely in shadow, and then add additional light to illuminate her face to whatever extent she saw fit.
With most of the light being carried by smoke from the fog machine, the stage was visible, but obscured in shadow, creating a convincing setting that implied more was actually on stage. This allowed the audience’s imagination to fill in the blanks of this setting we can’t fully see, which is one of Cain’s best tricks, seen in albums such as Preacher’s Daughter, where Cain uses this trick to convey some of the details of her stage persona’s life without fully spelling out the horror she’s experiencing.
Exploiting the unique benefits of stage production shows not only Cain’s attention to detail, but her and her team’s commitment to make this tour a visual storytelling experience, achieving artistry in spades without becoming pretentious.
Cain’s lighting stayed consistently precise throughout the show, only blasting the white overheads during the appropriately disorienting drop in Dust Bowl. She then broke the immersion to show off her more personable side for the encore, even meeting the crowd at the barricade for American Teenager.
So much of this review has focused on lighting and theatrics, not because there’s nothing worth noting in the musical performance, but because it’s all just simply fantastic. There’s only so much to pick apart when Ethel and the band nail every single note of the entire setlist.
Pretty much every song on the setlist hits even harder emotionally live, which is saying a lot for songs like these. Cain’s vocal delivery is not only emotional but dynamic, making it hard to get bored or be taken out of this “world” even in a set consisting primarily of slower, methodical songs.
For the live music industry, especially post-pandemic, the question is always “why is it worth it?” Why see an artist when you can just watch their live videos on YouTube or stream their studio albums? For me, Ethel Cain perfectly answers that question, not only with a beautiful performance that has to be seen live to truly appreciate, but also with immersive stage design. The Willoughby Tucker Forever Tour sucks the audience into the world of one of music’s most unique artists, where, for an hour and a half, they get to behold unfiltered musical magic, courtesy of Ethel Cain.