an album that got me through a hard time

04 Jul, 2026

Evie Fae’s carnival „An album that got you through a hard time“ really got me thinking: Did I ever have a hard time that an album got me through? This was an especially hard question to answer because I don’t think I’ve ever had a time in my life in which music didn’t provide an escape. For the longest time I didn’t bother processing any anxiety and instead turned my brain off by focusing on something else. Ever since discovering the novel for myself at age 11, I’ve had a book on me everywhere. Ever since, I’ve always been deep in worlds that weren’t mine. For that reason, I contemplated discussing more than one album (and thus deviating from the prompt), but then decided against that when the post became long enough with just one album discussed. I can yap about anything endlessly in case you haven’t noticed.

I would say this was still within acceptable bounds until my sophomore year. It was just not my year, hehe. I was overworked and underpaid. I was held captive at school for most of my days and regularly had to do schoolwork late into the night. Staying at school for long hours wouldn’t have been as bad if I didn’t dread spending time around my classmates who backed the asshole who bullied me and my friends. That’s when I dived head-first into escapism: getting lost in stories of a girl getting cannibalized, daydreaming about some space opera, getting drunk, skipping school when I could, and trying not to be home because I knew the second I wasn’t busy or was alone, I’d become aware of how inescapably shitty my life was regardless of how much I dreamt of an alternative or distracted myself from it. Long story short, it was a miserable time, but at least I didn’t peak in high school like those assholes. If you’re wondering about my state of affairs, I haven’t peaked yet. My life is an upward slope, just saying.

Up until that year, I had only been engulfed by complete, coherent stories in everything other than music. Preacher’s Daughter totally changed that. It was the one and only project that I at least sort of liked that Spotify ever recommended to me (back when I used that trash). I related to some parts of it, but thankfully less than half of it. The appeal was the fact it was an epos in song so my ADHD brain would fill the silence with it and I could think about what every line meant and reinterpret it. It’s a great album, don’t get me wrong (otherwise I wouldn’t be telling everyone about it, let alone writing this blog post about it), but I don’t think doing that was necessary or something I would’ve done, had I not wanted to think of something other than what I had to think about. Like geometry or my life after school just to give two examples.

The relatability of this album begins with the family baggage that the main character and narrator carries around her everywhere and ends about a step into talking about her sexual misadventures. So many points of this album just hit so hard. Given that my identity is a battleground of an unending war, it gave me lots to think about. As someone who grew up in a household that is oddly secular in some things and religious in others, I struggled with my atheism a lot. It felt like I always had to prove that my beliefs were valid and affected no one but me. God never helped me so why should I believe in him? I don’t function well with faith, or rather the trust in blindness—I prefer to see. Attempting to understand the world around me is what got and gets me through life, not God. So the religious themes, especially on Sun Bleached Flies hit too close to home. „God loves you, but not enough to save you,“ so true, sister. He loves me as long as my gay ass is not a faggot, but doesn’t bother to ungay me. Too bad. Guess I’ll be going to hell or something.

What the main character reckons with is the reality of living out her gender identity. Initially, Hayden Anhedönia aka Ethel Cain said the eponymous character was a trans woman, but later stated that it didn’t matter for the story. I’d say it matters a lot.¹ I often wondered if she, as someone from a conservative household and community, would’ve fallen for all the men who said they loved her if she hadn’t been so deprived of love. For her in particular to be not loved in her community, she’d either have to have been an asshole or a queer person. The asshole part is unlikely based on the story² so I chose to interpret her as a trans woman. It made me wonder if I chose to make my gender identity known to people around me, would I make myself vulnerable to that? Or am I already vulnerable to it either way? It’s both a yes and a no. Any feminine presenting person is more vulnerable in society by virtue of the subordination of the female to the male gender. However, by being scared that you may not be loved for who you are, you become an easier target for love-bombing and other manipulation tactics. I’m drifting off, but what I’m trying to say is that I think I’d be vulnerable to it as well, being non-binary, or somewhere in that realm, myself and from a relatively conservative household. So I think about this a lot.

What provides me solace is the belief that I’m more resourceful than the character. I have a better support system and I’m aware of this weakness. I’d like to believe that I confront doubts of who I am head on nowadays when they eventually creep up and then move on with life. In part, this is due to this album being so incredibly well made that I keep going back to it and being confronted with my fears all over. I personally think the otherwise lack of relatability³ is what has kept this album consistently one of my most played since 2022, otherwise it’d be too tied down by my circumstances at the time I abused listening to it.

#event