by Emma Riva
Fall arrived in Pittsburgh just for Ethel Cain. Though some of Cain’s music has the drawl of long summer days, her dreamy, vaguely-gothic-vaguely-country sound pairs best with a bite of cold in the air and the crunch of leaves. After a long stretch of eighty-degree afternoons, October 7 was the first real fall day in Pittsburgh. Cain’s concert at the Warhol Museum’s block party was my first evening out with a jacket on since early spring. “It’s cold as fuck!” she remarked at one point from stage. But she also added: “I’ve been on the road for so long, it’s nice to be home. Get to go home. Stay in bed. Play some Mario Kart.” Though Cain, real name Hayden Silas Anhedönia, brings her Southern Baptist-infused alternative rock around the country, she now lives in Pittsburgh.
The character of Ethel Cain comes from Anhedönia’s upbringing in Perry, Florida. She’s lived and worked in a refurbished church in Indiana and out of a quasi-abandoned house in Alabama. A New York Times profile of her called her “The Most Famous Girl at the Waffle House”—and in that interview, when asked about living in New York or Los Angeles, she said: “Oh God, I will never be caught dead living in either of those cities […] I don’t want any career that requires me to be there.” She ended up in neither, in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, perhaps in the wise words of local meme account @pittsburghpersonified: “Too cringe for New York, too based for LA, just delusional enough for Pittsburgh.”
Vogue called Anhedönia’s home a “quiet hideaway in Pittsburgh with a sloped roof that doubles as a portal to another world.” I can only hope that one day someone describes my house like that. That interview took place at Double Wide Grill, minutes from where I live. Though Anhedönia may not stay in Pittsburgh forever, she’s one of the highest-profile artists to call it home, and her specific brand of strange anachronism is in line with this strange, anachronistic city that I love.
On Saturday, Allegheny River sparkled in the sunset, the bright yellow of the bridges glowing pale against the hills. I spent an hour or so just people-watching before the concert started—Somebody sat on one of the steps sketching the Andy Warhol Bridge and scribbling some sort of poetry. Another concertgoer had a bomber jacket that read BUY WEED FROM WOMEN. As I made my way into the crowd to prepare for Cain to come onstage, I found myself befriending several people behind me who had just realized they had met at the McKnight Road Trader Joe’s a few days before. Another person in the circle then realized they attended therapy with a counselor at their new conversation partner’s workplace. “That’s so queer,” one of them said. “And so Pittsburgh.”
Anhedönia started the concert with the final track of her 2022 album Preacher’s Daughter. I thought to myself—wow, she’s really throwing us in the deep end here, not starting out with the sweeter, more structured crowd-pleaser “American Teenager” but instead “Strangers.” So, the experience began with Anhedönia crooning “I tried to be good, am I no good? / Am I no good? / Am I no good?” in a song that is literally about being cannibalized. The whole performance was a balance between the tender depth of her music and the outdoor-concert vibe. Once Anhedönia did get to “American Teenager,” though, the whole crowd danced along with her. Her stage presence is understated, her voice soft and firm but still melodic. Though her music swells and crescendos, this particular stage venue felt intimate, and she stepped down into the crowd at several moments to sing with the people in the front row.
When she got to “Gibson Girl,” another crowd favorite, Anhedönia laughed and said: “This one’s a little…inappropriate. Don’t worry, my mom said I could play it, though!” before launching into the song, which starts with “You wanna love me right now / You wanna get alone with me. / You wanna get my clothes off / And hurt me” and then escalates to “You wanna fuck me right now.” Preacher’s Daughter chronicles the life and escapades of the fictional Ethel Cain, a woman on the road attempting to answer thorny questions about Christianity, sexuality, family, and the self. Though she meets a grisly end at the hand of one of her lovers, Preacher’s Daughter makes for one hell of a tale.
Anhedönia is as good live, but Preacher’s Daughter is an album that begs to be listened to all the way through solo. Instrumental tracks like “Televangelism” and the doom metal standout “Ptolamaea” are not exactly concert staples but are powerful pieces of music to lose yourself in. I did so right before the show on a long, long walk from my current apartment through my old neighborhood, and just as “Stranger” rose to its climax, I climbed up the stairway to peek in the doorway of an old apartment I shared with an ex-boyfriend and peered inside. Weirdly, the residue of a graffiti sticker I had put on the fridge was still there. My ex didn’t clean it off and apparently whoever lives there now didn’t bother, either. “Am I no good?” Cain asked through my earbuds as I looked at the literal residue of my old life.
“Strangers” is not, to me, a sad song, despite being the tragic ending of the Ethel Cain character’s story, in which she’s eaten “like smoked bovine hide.” One of the song’s best moments is her musing “How funny, I never considered myself tough” as she imagines being chewed on by a murderous psychopath. When Anhedönia started the show with “Strangers,” after my phone battery had died and the sun went down, I felt the distorted guitar deep inside of me. She had my attention from then on.
For her encore, Anhedönia played “Crush,” the only song of the night not off of Preacher’s Daughter, pumping her fists as she sang the line “I owe you a black eye and two kisses / Tell me when you wanna come and get ’em!” She concluded the show by saying “See you at Target!” (Which Target? The Waterfront or Bakery Square? This is very important. If I had to guess, I would say I would more expect to run into Anhedönia at the bizarre spectacle of capitalism that is the Target at The Waterfront, in a former steel mill). “But seriously, if you see me at Target in my pajamas, please don’t say anything,” she added bashfully.
Anhedönia is one of those artists with a semi-rabid fanbase that calls her “Mother” and sets TikTok videos to her intense, dark songs about sexual trauma and intergenerational abuse. I’ve never been entirely comfortable at those sorts of concerts, hence why I didn’t see other alternative music darling Mitski at Stage AE earlier this year. Someone did scream “I love you!” at Anhedönia between songs, and I was reminded of a moment at a 2016 Mitski show in Los Angeles when a fan yelled that same declaration, and Mitski politely said back “You don’t know me. But thank you, I get that you really love my music, thank you very much.” Anhedönia simply chirped “I love you, too!” into the crowd. Where better to explore parasocial relationships and fame than the Warhol? Events like the Warhol Block Party serve as reminders that though Warhol and his contemporaries were pioneers, it’s important to look to what’s currently happening in our own city. You could run into Ethel Cain at Target. You could be the next Ethel Cain. Or the next Warhol, for that matter. What makes Anhedönia such a standout is her commitment to creating something entirely her own. Her presence in Pittsburgh can inspire others to carve that path, too.
Ethel Cain shared the stage with Helado Negro and Zenizen as openers, and the Warhol Block Party highlights the work of the Pop District and Warhol Academy initiatives.
PETRICHOR 
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