THEN CAME ETHEL CAIN

ETHEL CAIN闪亮登场

An interview with everyone's favorite new musician, plus a new episode of V WANNA KNOW.

【资料图】

一场与人见人爱的新兴音乐家的采访，附赠V WANNA KNOW的最新一集。

June 22, 2022

2022/6/22

TEXT: MATHIAS ROSENZWEIG

编辑:马西亚斯·罗森维格

“I didn’t really have a lot of friends for a while,” Ethel Cain says into her camera. She’s in a cabin with her family in Tennessee.  “I didn’t really get out of the house much. I was my whole world.” 

“实际上很长一段时间里我没有什么朋友，”Ethel Cain面对镜头如此说道。她正与家人住在田西纳州的一间小屋里。“我并不经常外出。自我即世界。”

That world, previously occupied only by 24-year-old Hayden Anhedönia (Ethel’s legal name), has since piqued the interest of thousands thanks to the release of her debut album, Preacher’s Daughter. That world is full of hair curlers, army camo, Victorian nightgowns, hauntingly beautiful vocals, and imagery of American youth in the south, smoking cigarettes in fields they drove to in pickup trucks. Cain might be a character of sorts, she is not too distant from Hayden, the source. 

她口中那个先前由24岁的Hayden Anhedönia（Ethel的真名）一人占据的世界，随着其首专[牧师的女儿]的发行激起众多人的兴趣。那是一个满是卷发棒、迷彩军装、维多利亚式睡裙、余音袅袅的声线，以及美国南方青年在皮卡货车之旅的终点于田地间抽烟的图景。该隐或许是某种角色，但与Hayden关系甚密。

“Back in 2018, I was 18 years old,” she starts, reminiscing on the path that led her here—”here” being a place where Anhedönia is working as a career musician and grasping the attention of fashion magazines and designers alike, parting the waters of the Alt-Pop ocean like a gothic Moses making space for herself. “I was super inspired by horror video games, especially Resident Evil Biohazard…I was unemployed and would just sit in my room, smoking weed every day, playing these games. I was going to make a horror album called Black Genesis...it was basically a concept album about, like, what if God and his angels were evil?”

“2018年时，我18岁，”她开口道，追忆引领她至今的道路——如今的她作为职业乐者，吸引着相似的时尚杂志与设计师的关注，如同哥特摩西¹般分流非传统流行乐界的汪洋²为自己开辟出一席之地。“我很大程度上受恐怖游戏启发，尤其是生化危机...失业那段时间，我每天就坐在房间里吸♡大♡麻，玩这些游戏。我想制作一张恐怖专辑名为黑色开端...大概是一张有关假如上帝和他的天使们是邪恶的概念专辑。”

This interest in God was, in a way, forced upon Anhedönia as a child. Raised in the Southern Baptist Church in Perry, Florida, she had little contact with the secular world. Musically, she immersed herself in Christian music like Gregorian Chants. 

这种对上帝的兴趣，某种程度上，在Anhedönia年幼时便已强加于她。在弗洛里达，佩里的南部浸信会教堂长大，她与现实世界联系甚少。她将自己沉浸于基督教音乐比如格林高利圣歌。

She went on to scrap the Black Genesis album after writing a song called "Stranger" about a serial killer kidnapping someone, paired with the development of Stockholm Syndrome. This was one chapter of a multi year-long story in which she repeatedly wrote and scrapped entire projects, salvaging only the strongest tracks, which have since found their way into her debut album.

在写下“Stranger”一歌后，她打消了创作“黑色开端”这张专辑的想法。“Stranger”讲述了某人被连环杀手绑架后陷入了斯德哥尔摩情结。这是长达数年的创作故事中的一章，期间她反复编写解构整部作品，打捞最精华的乐曲，从而成就了首专。

All the while, Anhedönia’s private world, one she shared with Ethel Cain, was changing. “I moved into a car lot, living in this little house at the back. This family turned their property into a car lot and rented out the house. I was living in this little side room. I just remember sitting there on the carpet, just writing this album and recording all these little demos.” Despite the world she was imagining, and the merging of this place with the real world we all share, it wasn’t always the easiest to translate into music. 

与此同时，Anhedönia那个曾经只同Ethel Cain分享的隐秘世界，逐步蜕变。“我搬进了一个停车场，生活在车场后面的一间小屋里。有一家人变卖财物买下了停车场并出租这间屋子。我住在其中一间小小的偏房里。坐在地毯上，写下专辑，录着一段又一段的样带，这些回忆依然生动。”尽管她有幻想中的世界，且这方沃土正与我们共享的现实世界相融合，将此般种种译作音乐的形式从来不是容易的。

“It’s like having a crazy acid experience and you see all sorts of shapes and colors, and then trying to explain that to other people the best you can. I’m just like, ‘God, I hope I’m doing it justice.’”

“就像是拥有着疯狂尖酸的经历，你能看到各种形状与色块，然后尽己所能尝试把这些解释给其他人听。我be like'上帝啊，愿我做得还不赖'。”

Now that she’s having some success, which surely comes with more financial stability and (hopefully) confidence in her craft (not that the latter ever seemed to be lacking), I ask what she thinks of the tough days living in a car park. 

鉴于目前该隐的小获成功，经济支撑和（但愿有）对于其作品的信心（后者似乎仍然欠缺）势必接踵而至，我询问她如何看待住在停车场的艰苦日子。

“I don’t want to think of those as like, the dark years. I don’t want to think of those as years just spent grinding and working. I spent all my free time working on music, yes, but I also ran around the woods with friends, spending my rent money and going without dinner so that I could buy an old lady dress because it made me feel pretty…I feel like, I’m either gonna make it one day or I’m not gonna make it. But either way, I want to look back and know that the journey was not completely painful.” 

“我并不想把那些时光看作黑暗岁月。也不想把它们看作徒费时间打磨与工作的日子。的确，我用自己的全部闲暇创造音乐，但与此同时我也和朋友们绕着森林奔跑，挥霍我的租金以及晚餐节食省下的钱来买一条旧式女裙，只因它让我感到自己是美丽的...我觉得，自己要不然好好度过这一天，要不然一日也无法苟活。但无论怎样，我希望能在回首时看到这趟旅程不只有苦难。”

She goes on to describe more of that time, stories of running around with lots of friends and no money, saving up coins for Subway hoagies and getting drunk in abandoned parking lots. She says that she was depressed, but that she doesn’t really remember the bad parts. 

她继续描摹着那段时光，讲述着与群友四处奔跑、身无分文，为了吃上地铁三明治攒硬币，还有在废弃的停车场喝得酩酊大醉。她说她有过沮丧，但不为那些不好的记忆耿耿于怀。

Anhedönia pauses for a moment. 

Anhedönia突然片刻停顿。

“It was, actually, just the purest form of me that I think has ever existed.”

“实际上，我想，只有最圣洁的那部分我曾真真切切存活于世。”

CREDITS: PHOTOGRAPHY BY SILKEN WEINBERG

摄影by西尔肯·温伯格

摩西¹:圣经中的希伯来先知、犹太人的领袖

分流非传统流行乐界的汪洋²:原文为“parting the waters of the Alt-Pop ocean”，此处类比了《圣经》创世纪第一章中上帝的创世行为——

“And God said, Let there be a firmament in the midst of the waters, and let it divide the waters from the waters.

And God made the firmament, and divided the waters which were under the firmament from the waters which were above the firmament: and it was so.”

（神说：“诸水之间要有空气，将水分为上下。”）

（神就造出空气，将空气以下的水、空气以上的水分开了。事就这样成了。）

翻译 by胡纸

hope u like it♡