Ethel Cain
Willoughby Tucker, I'll Always Love You
Daughters of Cain/AWAL
Release Date: 08/08/25
Just five months after she released the experimental standalone recording Perverts, Hayden Silas Anhedönia—more popularly known by the pseudonym Ethel Cain—has announced that her second studio album Willoughby Tucker, I'll Always Love You will arrive August 8th. The formal follow-up to Preacher’s Daughter (2022) originally titled Preacher’s Wife, the new LP functions as the thematic prequel to her debut album and the second installment of a planned album trilogy. The album’s narrative revisits the genesis of the protagonist character Ethel Cain’s relationship with Willoughby Tucker, who is referenced in “A House in Nebraska” from Preacher’s Daughter.
In conjunction with announcing the new album, Cain has unveiled the project’s daydream-inducing lead single “Nettles.” “This song and the last track on the record were both written the same week, the very first week I moved into the house in Alabama where I finished Preacher’s Daughter,” Cain explains in an official statement.
“In similar fashion to Preacher’s Daughter (specifically ‘A House in Nebraska’ and ‘Strangers’), I wrote what essentially became the beginning and end of the story without realizing it. What were originally just little vignettes of emotion I was feeling at the time ultimately became the tentpoles for a larger narrative. ‘Nettles’ became a dream of losing the one you love, asking them to reassure you that it won’t come true and to dream, instead, of all the time you’ll have together as you grow old side by side. Every once in a blue moon, it feels good to slough off the macabre and to simply let love be.”
To support the album’s release, Cain will embark upon the largely sold-out North American, UK and European “Willoughby Tucker Forever” tour that commences August 12th in Seattle and concludes November 9th in Lisbon.
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