Think of Us Inside: Ethel Cain Dreams of Love on Willoughby Tucker

Willoughby Tucker, I’ll Always Love You is a devotional, emotive meditation on a first love doomed from the start. Lengthy, patient songs float by like a dream you wake up from feeling vaguely sad, like you witnessed something beautiful you could never recapture.

Musically, the album boasts a modest confidence: languid guitar ballads stretch into double-digit timestamps, and instrumental passages leave ample room for reflection. The impact lies in the pursuit of ethereal beauty, rather than visceral agony. That’s not to say there are no dark moments. It is an Ethel Cain album, after all. “Tempest” sounds like the soundtrack to a séance, and “Dust Bowl” and “Fuck Me Eyes” make lurid references to intergenerational trauma. Overall though, compared to her previous album, Preacher’s Daughter, there is less of a focus on “lore,” plot, or narrative; we don’t get that “Ptolemae” scream moment. However, despite its subdued nature, every intricate moment on Willoughby is masterfully executed. From the multi-sectioned build on lead single “Nettles” to the delay on the guitar strings on “A Knock at the Door,” Cain nails every detail of every sound across every song while maintaining an organic dreaminess that flickers seamlessly between light and dark.

Compared to her previous work, Willoughby Tucker is less of an emotional sucker punch and more of a slow poison that lulls the listener into a vulnerable state, a soundtrack to losing yourself in thought. Willoughby’s final song, “Waco, Texas,” stretches past 15 minutes, but I don’t mind a sprawling closer when every new melody shines more exquisitely than the last. Plus, the run time illustrates the emotional crux of the record: dreaming of “forever and ever and ever and ever” with someone who can’t even love you right now.

This is a project consumed by yearning: yearning for connection (“Please don’t leave me / I’ll always need more”), yearning for attention (“I kinda hate her / I’ll never be that kind of angel”), yearning for commitment (“Think of us inside after the wedding”), yearning for monogamy (“I knew it was love when I rode home crying / Thinking of you fucking other girls”). It’s a love story consumed by lack.

If Preacher’s Daughter was an ode to eaters, to the consumptive nature of love, to those driven mad and reckless by desire, Willoughby is an ode to dreamers, those who pine and bargain with the universe for union with their other half.

So what does this record say about love? Love is longing, love is enduring, love is painful like the nettles that spring from the earth, but ultimately, love is hopeful, and – if it’s anything like the music – beautiful.

Willoughby Tucker, I’ll Always Love You is a gorgeous installment to the Ethel Cain Cinematic Universe, a rich text that will likely be scrutinized for years by sensitive queer kids who write illegible journal entries and find salvation in their local park. There is much to be said about the record’s thematic exploration of home, nature, time, gender, devotion, grief, religion, and pain, but for now, we can enjoy it for what it is: a tender collection of thoughts and feelings that flitter before us like sunlight slipping through the curtains.