So if you know me, you know I am so completely normal about Ethel Cain (by which I mean totally obsessed, who isn’t?). So I think the choice for the song of the week this week is really obvious, this being Ethel Cain’s new song “Nettles”. It’s safe to say I absolutely adore the song and I can’t stop listening to it; as of writing this I’ve listened to the song nearly 60 times in the few days it has been out and it is 8 minutes long! With listening to it so many times I feel I have picked out a lot of the details (though not all) and it’s nice on each relisten to try and find something new. So to try and justify my love of the song I’m going to talk about a few of my favourite moments and features of the song.
The first thing, naturally, is the start of the song; it feels so very reminiscient of Ethel’s recent album “Perverts”, the slow rolling synthesisers and droning with the dragging violins. However they weave a sort of positive resonance together in very direct contrast to that of songs from Perverts which feel jarring in places and almost scary. As these play together, a guitar is introduced to the melody of instruments and the droning fades away silently (I didn’t even notice it leaving) and we drift forward into more familiar feeling territory, that which is more similar to Ethel’s album “Preacher’s Daughter”, one which she is much more well known for.
One thing I really missed on Perverts was Ethel’s voice. It’s so so beautiful and while I don’t think it would fit all so well in all the songs on that album, boy does Nettles make up for it. The song has such range and Ethel performs it so well with a soft touch to each lyric, which makes them feel all the more sombre and sincere. I think she also has some great lyrics which are enunciated so clearly that you can really appreciate them without having to dive in. I think my favourite has to be the line “It wasn’t pretty like the movies, it was ugly like what they did to me”.
The last thing I wanted to focus on and one of my favourite parts of the song is the instrumentation. I think the choices are very interesting and weave together well to make a beautiful tapestry of a song. As I’ve already spoken about I really enjoy the violin, it plays lots of long drawn out notes and is so quiet and delicate in the song. I find it really nice to be able to zone out everything else and just listen to it sing in its own way along with Ethel, this is particularly evident when Ethel sings the line “Cause baby I’ve never seen brown eyes look so blue”, the crescendo after this sounds simply amazing and I can’t get over it each time I listen. The other instrument I wanted to focus on was the banjo, which feels kind of out of place but in context works so well.
Overall it feels very nice to have new music from Ethel that feels both similar and different to past stuff.
The Song of the Week: