Ethel Cain: Willoughby Tucker, I’ll Always Love You review – a dark, Lynchian coming-of-age story

The past is alive and fraught on Willoughby Tucker, I’ll Always Love You, the new album by Ethel Cain. Over the course of 10 long, disarmingly personal tracks, the 27-year-old American singer-songwriter – real name Hayden Anhedonia – plunges into the dark psychology of small-town adolescence with unsparing verve.

Willoughby Tucker is framed as Anhedonia’s second studio album – the intoxicatingly sparse Perverts, released earlier this year, is considered a separate project – and a “prequel” to Anhedonia’s 2022 breakthrough, Preacher’s Daughter.