Kneeling at the altar of a Preacher’s Daughter

I walked slowly into the crowd, a sea of five hundred poised to learn something about music, life, religion thought impossible.

Image Credit: Emma McIntyre, Getty Images for Coachella

I wore black leather and lace to meet Ethel Cain in the darkened chapel of the Sydney Opera House’s Drama Theatre. I thought it only fitting for this Sunday mass, my feet floating beneath a silk skirt and my face veiled behind a thin taffeta of smoke. I walked slowly into the crowd, a sea of five hundred poised to learn something about music, life, religion thought impossible. I fell to my knees at the stage’s altar — beset only with a microphone and a single chair — to whisper every lyric I had memorised like scripture into the smouldering yellow light. I was ready to sing my hymns.

There was complete silence and stillness when Cain emerged from the wings to take her seat in the pulpit of her disciples. Clearly fatigued from a mid-performance collapse the night before, this is where she remained for the majority of her sermon. Yet as the Theatre’s golden glow shifted to a shimmering halo, and Cain began to hum the first notes of A House In Nebraska, it was difficult to believe that I was not listening to the delicate vinyl propped up in my bedroom. Her voice haunted each raised platform a little more than the last, like a slender branch caresses and steadies a stained glass pane in the wind. From where I stood at the back of the auditorium, every breath became a flickering flame leading me back to the music.

Then the lights turned blue and green and the stage was awash with a deep guitar riff. While the rest of the crowd remained rooted to the spot, I swayed and staggered against the communion of drums pulsing through Family Tree and Thoroughfare. Fingers laced, mouth agape, head tossed back: I said my prayers to all the rivers and motel rooms I have known before. I could not stop smiling, even with all the tears brimming in my eyes and the goosebumps levelling on my skin.

Cain invited us to be her choir during Hard Times, to undress from our robes and lay ourselves bare for a God she told us was not listening. With her hands outstretched and her palms raised to the sky, she painted an image of sadness, or love, or resurrection against the dark mahogany of the stage floor. We sang where Cain could not, summoning a harmony so strong in Sun Bleached Flies that she knelt for the first row of the audience. Our murmurs rattled against these four walls, suspended in time and hanging like a trail of rosary beads around a preacher’s neck. God loves you, we screamed; but not enough to save you, we knew.

Cain’s performance ended somewhat abruptly after these five songs, surrendering the electricity and heat of chart-toppers like American Teenager and Gibson Girl for a forty-minute set time. But what she lacked in quantity she made up for in quality. With the audience now standing and joined together in a gritty sort of prayer, Cain led a crescendo to an encore of Crush — one of her “favourite songs” from her earlier discography. Watching Cain drift across that stage in a ceremony of flashing lights, I felt the deep peace that comes with Eucharist; that I had felt something larger than myself, so close I could touch it. Suffice to say, I almost did.

Ethel Cain performed at Sydney’s Vivid Live 2023 between June 2nd and June 4th. She will be continuing on to Brisbane, Melbourne and Hobart until the middle of June. This is her first Australian tour.