There’s something quietly, encouragingly perplexing about Ethel Cain’s stint in London – a stretch of her tour that encompasses five sold-out nights at Hammersmith’s Eventim Apollo, playing to a total of around 25,000 fans. A sea of people, mostly card-carrying members of Generation Z, pile into the west London venue for the first of these nights – an evening of music that’s raw, slow and almost pointedly uncommercial, swooping between big, churning ballads and doomy ambience.
But that is the contradiction of Cain — or, to use her real name, 27-year-old Hayden Anhedonia — an artist who has somehow hit the big time with a sound that seems antithetical to pop success. For pretty much the entirety of the set, Anhedonia performs in the shadows, masked by dry ice, or backlit in moody silhouette. For one song, the stage is plunged into darkness, her singing continuing as an unseen, disembodied voice. This is confessional songwriting rendered with a disorienting opacity, music that is somehow both immediate and removed.
