Ethel Cain previews Willoughby Tucker, I’ll Always Love You with new track "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. 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," Ethel Cain explains.

Willoughby Tucker, I’ll Always Love You serves as a prequel to Cain’s globally adored 2022 debut album Preacher's Daughter and follows her recent experimental project, Perverts.

The album recounts the story of Ethel’s first love, Willoughby Tucker, and their humid, laden romance. Cain produced and recorded the album over the past year in her home studios in Coraopolis, PA and Tallahassee, FL. The writing of the songs themselves spans her entire career as Ethel Cain, with some dating from the earliest days of the project and its mythmaking.