Ethel Cain shows ACL Fest a mother’s love in instant-classic set

Hearing Ethel Cain sing the word “praying” at full, haunted volume is a quicker line to heaven than clasping your hands.

The indie sensation — real name Hayden Silas Anhed?nia; Ethel Cain is both the main character in her music and a stage name — is colloquially called “Mother Cain” by her legions of fans. All of her children seemed to congregate Friday at the IHG Hotels & Resorts stage during the second weekend of Austin City Limits Music Festival.

Anhed?nia’s 2022 debut full-length, “Preacher’s Daughter,” is a moody Southern Gothic alt-pop opera, a concept album about a woman who flees her religious upbringing into a world of doomed love and gruesome violence. It brought critical acclaim for Anhed?nia, and Ethel Cain found her way into the hearts and minds. The songs are often used as TikTok sounds. The singer’s surreal wit on social media earned acolytes. In particular, her spell has enchanted the LGBTQ community (Anhed?nia is transgender), as well as listeners who identify with her stories of religious trauma from growing up Southern Baptist in Florida. (That Venn diagram is sometimes a circle.)

Saturday at ACL: Besides the headliners, you could see the annular solar eclipse at ACL Fest this weekend.

At ACL Fest, fans howled in spurts before Anhed?nia even hit the stage. What a feat, to pull a massive festival crowd for an atmospheric art piece about God and cannibalism.

The word of the day at Mother Cain’s Home for Wayward Fest-goers: presence. This set felt like an event. She opened with “House in Nebraska,” an expansive and ethereal standout from “Preacher’s Daughter.” Arms behind her back and videos of pastoral scenes farther behind, Anhed?nia conjured pure mood: “And I still call home that house in Nebraska/ Where we found each other on a dirty mattress on the second floor.” Peals of adulation erupted to shadow-soaked chamber music.

Anhed?nia stuck the mic out like an offering plate, and the crowd tithed the words, “That I'm the reason you won't come home.” Later, the singer made her voice small, singing, “I just pray that you’re alright.” Then her band brewed up a flood. It reminded me of Alanis Morissette’s set-closing “Uninvited” from Weekend 1.

Anhed?nia confidently busted out “American Teenager” second — her hit so undeniable that former President Barack Obama included it on one of his playlists, despite its withering portrait of how the U.S. military chews up youth into a meat grinder. (A sample lyric: “The neighbor's brother came home in a box/ But he wanted to go, so maybe it was his fault/ Another red heart taken by the American dream.”)Every moment was a shout-along. A barefoot Anhed?nia descended the stage to sing with fans from the barricade. And not just like how musicians typically hang out at the edge of the pit, don’t make eye contact and then leave so soon that you’d think they’d just been waiting for their table at Red Lobster to be ready.

No, Anhed?nia became one with the crowd, seeming to luxuriate in the intimacy. She sang the song’s chorus in a young fan’s face, and they matched the words so passionately that the line between performer and audience became a smudge. A couple minutes after Anhed?nia left that spot, the camera showed the fan on the big screen. They seemed to cry with their face in their hand, as another fest-goer held their shoulders and grinned.

Surrounded by dark, stormy guitars and drums slinking like coyotes, Anhed?nia’s voice transmogrified on “Family Tree.” The tone hung bright in the sky and then settled into something dusky. “Christ, forgive these bones I've been hiding/ Oh, and the bones I'm about to leave,” she sang with a pinch of blues. And when Anhed?nia belted, it sounded like breaking open a cavern.

“Now we’re in Texas, so I know you guys get down with a little country,” Anhed?nia told the audience. (She got Terry Black’s Barbecue for dinner, she shared later: “Texas does the best barbecue, by the way.”) The singer requested a big yee haw before “Thoroughfare,” featuring a harmonica solo that further evoked Alanis and vocals that were all Bonnie Raitt.

It was a short but instant-classic set. “Gibson Girl” and “Sun-Bleached Flies” followed, with 2021 single “Crush” closing the show. Anhed?nia went to the barricade again and finished the song by lunging into a hug with an audience member before sprinting backstage.

Once you’ve experienced a mother’s love, you’re never the same.

This article originally appeared on Austin American-Statesman: Ethel Cain's ACL Fest show was an instant-classic