Two Saturdays ago, Sept. 13, two of our editors had the privilege of seeing Ethel Cain live at Outer Harbor in our neighboring city of Buffalo. The outdoor venue was beautiful — there was a lovely sunset as the show began, which reflected vibrantly on the open water of Lake Ontario. The venue was not overwhelmingly large. The General Admission (GA) crowd encircled the stage, which was positioned against the water. Several feet back from the general admissions crowd, a modest lawn sloped steeply upward in colosseum style. A large pavilion of food vendors stood to the left of the stage selling amenities for concert-goers, like affordable tacos and acai bowls. We got surprisingly good spots, given that neither of us paid for VIP seating. We were standing near the stage and big screen, right next to the premium GA. The opening band, 9Million, put on a decent performance. Their music was a solid grunge-revival sound, although their annoyance at the crowd for their low energy (not ‘crowd surfing’), took away from their set.
After a brief period following 9Million’s performance, Ethel Cain emerged, to rapturous applause from the audience. The stage was decked out to look like a Florida swamp. Dense vines clung to the ceiling and weeds festooned the floor in front of the performance stand. Cain’s podium was fashioned after a well, made out of leaves, with a massive wooden cross facing out towards the audience.
The set began with the ambient instrumental track “Willoughby’s Theme” (which to the audience indicated that her new record “Willoughby Tucker, I’ll Always Love You” would be played in full), and the crowd waited with bated breath as Cain’s head lolled dramatically towards the ceiling during the purely instrumental buildup. “Janie” brought in the first song with Cain’s mellifluous vocals, much to the approval of the crowd, who erupted in applause upon hearing Cain’s voice. The song, like most of the tracks performed at the concert, was a slow, ambling tune that allowed Cain’s vocals and lyrics to shine through the dreamy guitars and atmosphere. Providing a sharp contrast, she then proceeded into “Fuck Me Eyes,” an uptempo number that brought more energy into the crowd; the roaring guitars and driving synthesizer shifted the vibe of the show into a classic rock direction. She followed this with the album’s lead single, “Nettles,” a slow, country-tinged number that involved some lovely live banjo. String lights lazily pulsed and flickered in the weeds like fireflies during this track. The sweet smiles exchanged between Cain and her banjo player added to the merriment that the warm song bubbled into on stage as the timidity of the first notes swelled into something more swinging and playful…