Sure, Cain has hits, but overwhelmingly, her discography does not lend itself to an excitable live atmosphere. Finally, on this tour, she\u2019s leaning into that.<\/p>\n Thus, what fans get is performance art. There are periods where Cain stands still and statuesque, not scrimping on the ambient outros. Mostly, though, it was about the light. I\u2019m not sure I\u2019ve ever seen a gig with a light show this impressive. During \u2018Fuck Me Eyes\u2019 alone, we go from moody darkness to bold pink to strobes. For \u2018Dust Bowl\u2019, she\u2019s nothing but a silhouette as the lights spin a starburst around her. Every single song is a visual masterpiece.<\/p>\n The sound, though? Not so much. If there\u2019s ever an artist who should invest in the\u00a0new immersive sound technology\u00a0used by people like Bon Iver, it\u2019s Ethel Cain. You can tell her band and her are in top form, especially the drums that sound clean and stadium-scale huge. But Hammersmith Apollo can\u2019t keep up, especially when she delves into the audio chaos of\u00a0Pervert<\/em>\u00a0tracks. With everything clearly on full blast, the speakers compress it to dirt.<\/p>\n The other issue is the dichotomy of Cain\u2019s own fans. Her performance feels like high art, but three times in one night, it\u2019s dogged by the need to stop for issues in the crowd. Obviously, safety is essential, and with a light show that intense, it could have been overwhelming or even hazardous to people despite the signage warning of the same. Obviously, the well-being of an audience is important, but undeniably, there is a certain demographic of the crowd that seems to have fallen into this habit. It\u2019s younger fans who spend all day, sometimes even longer, camped out outside, not eating or drinking enough and then getting overexcited to the point of collapse. It\u2019s not Cain\u2019s fault, but still, her opuses don\u2019t work well when broken up, which is to say, when somebody passed out during \u2018Waco, Texas\u2019, interrupting my own cathartic cry, I felt owed an unrepayable debt.<\/p>\n Should we hold that against Cain? No. It\u2019s something to celebrate that when playing a lengthy track like \u2018Tempest\u2019 and being forced to interrupt, she will fully start again, prioritising the art and the flow, even if the fame she\u2019s found herself in isn\u2019t exactly the thing threatening it.<\/p>\n There are other issues that could be picked up. I could talk about wishing that the setlist had a narrative like her records, yet mostly, when you\u2019re hearing songs like hers, bathed in light like that, everything falls away. It felt like sitting in the cinema more than anything, watching something stunning, which is seemingly exactly what the artist wanted, as we never really saw her face once.<\/p>\n I went to the\u00a0Ethel Cain\u00a0show and I didn\u2019t see her once. Hidden behind spotlights and shadows, some may have been clamouring to witness the star, … <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":3489,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3488","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-blog"],"yoast_head":"\n![\"Ethel](\"https:\/\/cdn1.faroutmagazine.co.uk\/uploads\/1\/2025\/10\/Ethel-Cain-live-in-London-High-art-dogged-by-low-brow-issues-Far-Out-Magazine-F-819x1024.jpg\")
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