After first rising to prominence with the expansive, 1980s-inspired dream-pop of ‘Preacher’s Daughter’ and its standout tracks, Ethel Cain has spent much of her artistic journey trying to step away from that sound. She’s leaned into a moodier mix of drone, ambient rock, and raw analogue textures. “I’m not a fucking pop artist,” the Tallahassee singer once told The FADER, adding, “I reject that wholeheartedly.” Her experimental projects ‘Perverts’ and ‘Willoughby Tucker, I’ll Always Love You’ make that stance very clear, and her latest tour often feels like a firm break from the softer sounds that brought her into the spotlight.
For the first of her five headline nights at Hammersmith Apollo, Hayden Anhedönia builds a scene that feels like a slightly playful, gently eerie B-movie graveyard. She spends most of the performance tucked inside a moss-covered altar, surrounded by dramatic lighting and a crucifix mic stand. The show is nearly silent when it comes to onstage chatter. The rare moments she does address the audience are understated and easy to miss. When a fan shouts their love for her, she responds with a simple “Thank you!” from the darkness.
Instead of walking the stage to build energy, the lighting design carries that weight, mirroring the intensity of her songs. During the gritty, heavy ‘Dust Bowl’, she sings inside a slowly circling beam of light that sweeps across the Apollo with piercing brightness, while strobing green and white lights heighten the tension during long instrumental passages.
Ethel Cain. Credit: Connie Burke
As the warm, rough-edged guitars of ‘Knock At The Door’ fill the room, the production shows it can match the strange, atmospheric side of Cain’s catalogue, even if those moments are rare tonight. The set doesn’t lean heavily on ‘Perverts’, but brief pieces of ‘Houseofpsychoticwomn’ and the title track make their way in. The industrial ballad ‘Vacillator’ appears in full, bathed in stark white light as she softly sings, “If you love me, keep it to yourself,” on a track heavy with buried emotion.
For the most part, the night is devoted to ‘Willoughby Tucker, I’ll Always Love You’. The album slows the cinematic Southern Gothic of her debut ‘Preacher’s Daughter’ and explores the dizzying pull of a teenage love triangle. The shimmering synths of ‘Fuck Me Eyes’ and the lush strings of ‘Nettles’ bring an early glow, before the performance drifts into hazy ambient dream-rock reminiscent of Grouper. The mood is thick and steady, though it lacks big shifts in dynamics, leaving the set on a single emotional wavelength.
When ‘Tempest’ is briefly stopped and restarted so medics can help an audience member, ‘Waco, Texas’ follows as the main set closer. The encore then pivots toward older material, shifting the tone entirely. After a heartfelt ‘A House in Nebraska’, Anhedönia steps out from behind her green altar for the first and last time, moving into the brighter side of her discography with ‘Crush’ and ‘American Teenager’. Even though she has expressed discomfort with her most well-known tracks, their contrast with her darker material gives the finale a powerful lift. After holding the room in quiet tension for so long, their arrival feels like a release that lands with even greater impact.
MUSIC PREMIERES
Four years on from the ‘Actual Life’ series lifting him into the mainstream spotlight, Fred Again.. continues to feel unavoidable. The London producer and DJ born Fred Gibson has moved at a relentless pace, bouncing between sold out stadium dates in New York and surprise appearances at Sheffield’s 1,000 capacity Forge, while also making history as the first electronic artist to top the bill at Reading and Leeds in 2024.
Where the ‘Actual Life’ releases and his fourth album, 2024’s ‘Ten Days’, leaned into warmth and joy pulled from ordinary moments, Gibson has also sharpened his instinct for high impact club weapons rooted in garage, dubstep and jungle. That side of his output lives on ‘USB’, an “infinite album” first imagined in 2022 as a home for tracks that exist outside any fixed universe, including defining moments like ‘Rumble’ and ‘Jungle’.
‘USB002’, the second vinyl only chapter of the ‘USB’ project, brings together 16 recent tracks, many of which surfaced gradually on streaming services over a ten week stretch. The music was shaped live, in step with ten unannounced DJ appearances across the world from Dublin to Mexico City. Even with a Glastonbury style registration system in place, The Times reported that 100,000 people tried to secure tickets for the opening night in Glasgow.
Appropriately, ‘USB002’ feels alive and constantly in motion, helped along by contributions from close collaborators such as Floating Points and Sammy Virji. The rigid, techno driven pressure of ‘Ambery’ echoes elements of Floating Points’ 2019 album ‘Crush’, while Gibson’s take on ‘The Floor’ builds like the slow climb of a rollercoaster before dropping back to earth without warning.
The guest list stretches beyond the usual dance circles, with two Australian guitar bands popping up in unexpected ways. ‘You’re A Star’ reworks Amyl and The Sniffers’ ‘Big Dreams’ into a breakbeat driven rush, while ‘Hardstyle 2’ pulls the experimental post punk edge of Shady Nasty into an Underworld adjacent space alongside Kettama. Gibson’s real trick is his ability to connect with anyone. These tracks are not reinterpretations but full takeovers.
The visual world wrapped around the ‘USB002’ rollout reinforces the instinct behind the music. Phones were prohibited at shows staged in vast warehouse spaces under sweeping light rigs, while Gibson’s team shared striking black and white footage and created artwork for each single on site. Bottling that sense of urgency, the project is rooted in the thrill of the present moment, something Gibson seems able to summon simply by turning up.
If the ‘Actual Life’ series and ‘Ten Days’ captured passing snapshots of experience, ‘USB’ is defined by constant movement, a space where boundaries are removed entirely. Sitting somewhere between an album and a playlist, ‘USB002’ underlines why Fred Again.. feels so dominant right now, and suggests that his current run may only be the beginning of something much bigger.
