Ethel Cain released Preacher’s Daughter in May 2022 with almost no major label support and an aesthetic built around Southern Gothic imagery, Christian iconography, and the specific experience of growing up queer in a fundamentalist religious community. The album became one of the more discussed debuts of the year, partly because of its quality and partly because Cain, born Hayden Silas Anhedönia, had built a devoted online following before anyone in the traditional music press was paying attention.

Preacher’s Daughter is a concept album structured as the story of a young woman who leaves her religious community, falls into danger, and meets a violent end. The narrative is not subtle and does not intend to be. Cain is interested in the specific language of American evangelical Christianity and how that language shapes the inner life of people who are formed by it and then rejected by it or compelled to reject it themselves.

The production, largely self-handled by Cain, pulls from ambient music, shoegaze, country, and electronic production without feeling like pastiche. Songs like American Teenager and Thoroughfare operate in a register that is both emotionally direct and formally ambitious. The album runs over an hour and maintains coherence throughout, which is a structural achievement as much as an artistic one.

Preacher’s Daughter arrived in a cultural moment that was ready for it, and it found an audience that was waiting for music to name experiences it had not previously heard named. It remains one of the more genuinely original debut albums of the 2020s.