Ethel Cain - Golden Age

I’ve spent a not insignificant part of my life wonder what makes a song sad. Is it...

Wait, hold on. Real quick, before I go wandering down this "sad song" rabbit hole: this record is one of the best things I’ve heard all year. 

Okay, back to the sad song question. 

The obvious answer is that lyrics set the emotional tone for a song. Writing about something sad makes a song sad. But Sammy Hagar has written songs about breakups and when I hear them I don’t think “hey, this breakup song makes me sad,” I think “oh good, whoever this song is about doesn’t have to be around Sammy Hagar anymore.” Most sad lyrics don’t feel like they’re about a specific person or incident or experience. They feel like generic platitudes that could be written by anyone about anything. Put more bluntly, Sammy Hagar lyrics aren’t sad because even when Sammy Hagar writes about something sad, his lyrics lack any sort of specifics or details that would suggest the vulnerability necessary to elicit that kind of emotional reaction in the listener. 

Conversely, there’s the music. Particular chord progressions magically seem to elicit sadness in the listener. Or, more accurately, they often do. I once got in an argument with a friend of mine over whether or not a particular melody in a song was sad, and we never resolved it. Music is subjective and the emotions it stirs in any listener will be based on how that particular person hears the song. 

So if writing lyrics on a sad subject doesn’t work, by itself, and sad melodies are subjective, we’re left with the idea of a sad song being something somewhat ethereal. Some people just crack the code. 

Ethel Cain cracked the code. 

This album is a droning, downtempo exploration of feeling exquisitely anxious. This album is the musical equivalent of someone staring at the phone in their hand, debating if the wound they’re hemorrhaging blood from is worth calling 911 over, or if they should just wrap some gauze around it, take a few pills, and hope for the best. Sonically, I would compare it to Marissa Nadler or Emma Ruth Rundle, with sparse music backing up lush, cathartic vocals. Yet there’s something startlingly unique to Ethel Cain’s songwriting and storytelling. The lyrics are rough; violent and charged and vulnerable in a way  that makes you feel like you’re reading someone’s diary while they come up the stairs, even as the music has a warm and inviting quality to it. 

If you're at all interested in confessional, singer/songwriter stuff that that doesn't sound like whatever image you have in your head of that genre, I strongly suggest you take a listen to Ethel Cain. This is as brutal as music gets.