Girl on fire
One of music’s most exciting new stars, Ethel Cain, is lighting up our shores as part of Vivid’s worldclass festival, and she’s not the only reason Sydney is the place to be this month. By Jonah Waterhouse.
Beginnings don’t get much more humble than that of Hayden Silas Anhedönia, better known by her stage name and alter ego Ethel Cain.
“I knew absolutely nothing about producing … I had zero experience, I had zero friends with experience, and I am far too ADHD to watch a YouTube tutorial,” the performer recalls of her teenage years, Zooming in from her sofa in downtown Pittsburgh. “I had GarageBand on the computer my parents got me for my [high school] graduation. I had a pair of the little corded Apple [headphones] that come with your phone. I just opened my computer one day and thought to myself, I can sing a little bit, I don’t know how to do anything else … I just tried to create a lush [sonic] landscape with the only instrument I had, which was my voice.”
Living in rural north-western Florida, Cain would spend her days layering her vocals on top of one another to create songs, occasionally dropping in a synth. Her stripped-back early music resembles chanting, partly inspired by her complex relationship with Christianity as a trans woman in a Baptist family. This remains a theme in her gothic debut album,
Preacher’s Daughter, released last May to universal acclaim. Since then, her ascent could be described as meteoric; in April she performed at Coachella and, this month, is headed to Sydney as a headlining musical act as part of the annual Vivid cultural festival.
“There are not many festivals in the world where you can showcase Jennifer Coolidge in one breath, and Australia’s most celebrated artist John Olsen in another,” notes Gill Minervini, the director of Vivid Sydney. (Coolidge will appear in conversation with her The
White Lotus showrunner Mike White through Vivid Ideas; the late Olsen’s iconic works will be beamed onto the Opera House as part of the annual Lighting of the Sails.)
“This year’s program is bigger and will be amazing,” says Minervini. “But it also shows a creative development and the evolution of how Vivid has come of age for its 13th year.”
Fans in Australia and abroad admire Cain’s involved online presence on Tumblr and Twitter, and resonate with her truth-meets-fiction storytelling and search for belonging. All possible reasons her Vivid Live concert was the first of the program to sell out – even after a third show was added to the festival.
But while Cain’s impact spans the globe, her relationship with the American South of her childhood remains complicated. “I had a very bad taste for the South in my mouth, pretty much through my whole entire adolescence,” says the 25-year-old. “I wanted to move to Seattle, the opposite corner of America.” Financial difficulties prevented this, but the beauty of her home state inspired a change of heart, prompting an awakening. “[Through music] I realised I could love the South in a way that was intimate and personal to me, and not through the lens of what my family and what my community was forcing on me,” she remembers.
An example is her single “American Teenager”, a wry comment on the American Dream. Opening with a Springsteen-like guitar riff, the song discusses patriotic acts that were hailed during Cain’s Southern upbringing – from going to church, to going to war – which she personally struggles with.
“I like to be nihilistic and think people aren’t going to get what I’m writing. And then of course they do because they’re smart, and I’m just an asshole,” she says. “When that song came out, I was
like, this is about my struggles with patriotism and my distrust in this country and the disingenuous hope [instilled in you] that’s kind of empty, and people were like, ‘Yeah, I feel the same way.’ I was like, okay, good to know, I’m not alone in this.”
Former President Barack Obama is an unexpected fan; he included “American Teenager” on his playlist for 2022. Given the song’s criticism of the US establishment, Cain sees the irony. “I highly doubt that was Obama himself,” she says. “I’m sure that was just an intern who thought they were being funny.”
Aside from Cain’s music, her presence – tall and tattooed, radiating insouciant cool – has piqued intrigue for the fashion industry. Givenchy’s Matthew M. Williams designed her red-andwhite varsity look for Coachella, and she has walked twice for Miu Miu, a brand known for its unmatched ability to anoint It-girls. “I felt like I was going to fall over and start flying at the same time … it was a little weird, but I had a really good time,” she recalls.
While she’s getting used to travelling, Cain admits moving to a big city like Pittsburgh was a mistake, and feels better in nature, where her gritty view of Americana can take shape. “I spend most of my time alone in my truck driving around, soaking in the atmosphere of wherever I am, or I’ll go home to Florida … I usually have to take my shoes off and run into the woods and be alone for a while and soak up everything that I know always inspires me.”
Nonetheless, she affirms that interacting with her fans, especially those with similar upbringings, snaps her out of the echo chamber fame can create. “You’re supposed to feel for everybody, but it really does hit home when it’s someone from home,” she says. “It’s people in the South that I’ve met, and I get DMs from, that really remind me who I’m writing about when I tell these stories.”
For Ben Marshall, curator of Vivid Live, Cain’s music “perfectly captures integrity and vibrancy … her work is uncompromising but open and compelling”. Noting Vivid’s history of hosting acclaimed artists, from Solange in 2018 to The Cure in 2019, Marshall considers different sonic spectrums when choosing performers, as well as who might sound best in the Opera House, which celebrates its 50th anniversary this year. “There has to be a high degree of trust – in both the artist and in the machine here at the Opera House to deliver it – and a belief in their vision,” he says. “When those things are there, I can focus on making sure it’s realised the best way possible.”
Vivid Live is just one of the festival’s drawcards in 2023, which will bring art to life throughout the Harbour City.
The Dark Spectrum installation will turn Sydney’s abandoned underground tunnels into a light-filled maze, while an
eight-and-a-half kilometre long light show – the biggest in the festival’s history – will play out against the backdrop of Sydney Harbour. Vivid Food, a marketstyle tribute to Sydney’s layered patchwork of cuisine, as well as its love of dining out, will also have its debut. All events and musical acts incorporate this year’s theme, “Vivid Sydney, Naturally”.
Given Cain’s environment-informed approach, she’s an organic fit.
“Vivid Live showcases live music as the thread that connects us to our natural and urban environments, our culture, our families, our stories and our sense of belonging,” says Minervini. What the seasoned festival director, who joined Vivid in 2022 and shepherded its biggest opening night in history, loves most about her work is the scope of this citywide celebration. “[The festival] allows me to work with a big, beautiful canvas that shouts from the rooftops how incredible the creativity in New South Wales and Australia is,” says Minervini, “and shows this off to the world.”
For her Sydney trip, Cain is excited to connect with audiences while producing her upcoming project, which is inspired by bleak winters in Pennsylvania: “a little dark, a little meta”. She mentions that her stage set-up will be minimal, leaving audiences with only the sound of her otherworldly vocals ricocheting from the Opera House’s walls.
“I’m not really even cognisant of anything happening on stage, besides the music and the people that I’m singing to and with … So I’ll probably just pack up my nicest white old lady dresses, haul ass to Australia, and get down with the crowd like every other time, and hold their hands and scream the songs with them,” she says with a hint of a smile. “And I’m really looking forward to it.”
Vivid Sydney is on from May 26 to June 17. Go to vividsydney.com.