Travelling from London to Cardiff for a concert less than five hours after landing from Australia might seem excessive, but it felt completely justified for a stop on Ethel Cain’s Willoughby Tucker, Forever tour. Having grown up between Australia and the United States, and spending most of my school breaks in the American South and Midwest, Cain’s music has always reminded me of sticky-sweet Southern summers, long highways cutting through endless farmland, the bruised green skies that gather before a tornado and the haunting stillness that settles over rural America. It also evokes the darker realities beneath those memories: religious conservatism, generational trauma, and the experience of growing up queer in communities where acceptance isn’t always easy to find. Yet, standing in Cardiff Castle made me feel closer to my youth than I had in years, a testament to Ethel Cain’s ability to create music deeply rooted in one place while resonating effortlessly in another.

Willoughby Tucker, Forever (2025) expands the fictional universe Hayden Silas Anhedönia has built through Ethel Cain, both her stage name and the protagonist whose life intimately unfolds across her work. Acting as a prequel to her 2022 debut studio album Preacher’s Daughter, the record follows Ethel’s complex relationship with her first love, Willoughby Tucker. Set in the fictional town of Shady Grove, Alabama, the album explores the intoxicating intensity of first love and the places that shape us. 

Having also been fortunate enough to see Cain earlier this year at Melbourne’s Palais Theatre in February, Cardiff offered a striking contrast, with the open-air setting allowing the performance to breathe in a way that felt impossible indoors. Cain moved across the stage effortlessly, chatting between songs, laughing with the audience and repeatedly expressing her affection for the city, creating a far more relaxed and spontaneous atmosphere than I had experienced in Melbourne. Before beginning her set, Cain joked that Cardiff Castle had the “sickest walk to stage ever”, immediately dissolving the almost devotional anticipation that had settled over the crowd and setting the tone for an evening that felt playful, intimate and deeply connected to its surroundings. Oli Colman’s understated stage design heightened the atmosphere further, with weathered iron fencing overgrown with greenery and a striking scythe-shaped microphone stand feeling perfectly at home against the medieval backdrop of Cardiff Castle. By the end of the night, Cain—draped in a Welsh Pride flag--had made the evening feel inseparable from Cardiff itself, not just another stop on an international tour. 

Live, Cain’s music takes on a scale and emotional depth that extends far beyond its studio versions, with songs moving seamlessly between delicate acoustic passages and towering guitars, driving basslines and walls of distortion before dissolving back into near silence. These shifts in dynamics never feel abrupt; instead, they reveal just how confidently she draws from Appalachian folk, country, Southern rock, slowcore, shoegaze, indie rock, gospel and ambient music, weaving each influence into a sound that remains unmistakably her own. The band matched this ambition with remarkable precision, allowing every dynamic shift—from near silence to overwhelming crescendos—to unfold with effortless control. Tracks such as “Gibson Girl”, “House in Nebraska” and “Ptolemaea” took on an almost physical intensity live, while quieter performances of “Vacillator” and “Tempest”" retained an extraordinary intimacy, holding thousands almost entirely still. It is this constant interplay between restraint and release, intimacy and intensity, that makes Cain's live performances so compelling.

The setlist struck a near-perfect balance between tracks from Willoughby Tucker, Forever and older fan favourites, including “Nettles”, “Dust Bowl”, “Ptolemaea”, “Crush” and the night’s most anticipated song, “Sun Bleached Flies”. The crowd's reaction made it clear I wasn't the only one hoping to hear it, particularly after missing it during her Melbourne this year. Cain more than delivered: as the song reached its closing notes,  rain began falling across Cardiff Castle—one of those rare concert experiences no production team could have planned. It left both me and the thousands gathered beneath the castle walls in delight and awe.

That same sense of interconnectedness extended well beyond the audience, with Cain continually reinforcing the collaborative nature of the contemporary Southern alternative scene. Throughout the evening, Anhedönia referred to Ethel Cain as “we” rather than “I”, repeatedly acknowledging her band and collaborators and emphasising that the project is as much a collective creative vision as it is an individual one. This sense of community extended beyond the stage, with one of Cain’s guitarists wearing a cap from North Carolina band Wednesday—a subtle but meaningful reminder of the contemporary Southern alternative scene, where artists remain connected through shared influences, regional identity and an enduring sense of place. Standing in a Welsh castle, surrounded by thousands of people singing along to songs rooted in rural America, I found it impossible not to recognise just how far that community now reaches.

Perhaps why Ethel Cain resonates so deeply is her ability to honour Southern traditions while widening who gets to be seen within them, recognising that LGBTQ+ people have always existed within the American South and the stories that have shaped its music, even if they have rarely been afforded the space to stand at the centre of them. Drawing on her own experiences as a transgender woman, Anhedönia places those perspectives at the heart of her songwriting, creating songs in which queer listeners—whether they’re growing up in the American South, standing in Cardiff Castle, or anywhere in between—can see themselves reflected without feeling disconnected from the places that shaped them. While discussions regarding Cain often reduce the project to merely a Southern Gothic aesthetic, Willoughby Tucker, Forever reminds listeners that the genre has always been concerned with confronting the realities beneath the mythology of the South, a tradition that owes an enormous debt to Black Southern artists, from the spiritual and musical foundations laid by Blind Willie Johnson to contemporary voices such as Adia Victoria, whose songwriting continues to broaden and redefine the genre. Rather than romanticising or condemning the South, Anhedönia embraces its contradictions, acknowledging the beauty of its landscapes, music and communities alongside its enduring legacies of racism, poverty, violence and religious extremism. In doing so, she presents the region as it is: a place of profound complexity, humanity and resilience. 

Cardiff Castle was an extraordinary location, but it wasn’t the only thing that made the evening unforgettable—that came from Cain’s ability to create a world where Southern Gothic storytelling, musical intensity and quiet vulnerability could all coexist with complete conviction. The performance affirmed Cain's place as one of the most compelling artists today, capable of translating deeply personal songwriting into a universal experience of remarkable emotional power.