Ethel Cain is getting ready to release her album Willoughby Tucker, I’ll Always Love You on Aug. 8, and on Wednesday, she shared a preview of the project by offering her eight-minute single “Nettles.” In an Instagram story posted to one of her art accounts, she said that the song was inspired by Twin Peaks, and that she hunted down the specific synths that composer Angelo Badalamenti used to make the show’s classic theme song.
“Also fun fact,” she wrote in her Instagram story. “To everyone saying the song reminds them of Twin Peaks; late last year i watched that video of angelo badalamenti explaining how he wrote laura’s theme and loved it so much that i hunted down the synths he used for the twin peaks and bought them and those are the ones i used for ‘willoughby.” that video is also the reason i decided to watch twin peaks lol.”
In another Instagram story, she continued, “For those asking, the specific keyboard I used for the nettles intro (i call them my angelo synths) was a Yamaha DX7s.”
Badalamenti collaborated on the music with the show’s creator David Lynch and singer-songwriter Julee Cruise, eventually creating the theme song “Falling.” The classic track was the cornerstone of the 1990 soundtrack Music From Twin Peaks, and the song went on to win the 1991 Grammy for Best Pop Instrumental Performance.
Cain said in a statement that “Nettles” was written around the same time as her last album. “This song and the last track on the record were both written the same week, the very first week I moved into the house in Alabama where I finished Preacher’s Daughter,” Cain said. “In similar fashion to Preacher’s Daughter (specifically ‘A House in Nebraska’ and ‘Strangers’), I wrote what essentially became the beginning and end of the story without realizing it. What were originally just little vignettes of emotion I was feeling at the time ultimately became the tentpoles for a larger narrative.”
She added, “‘Nettles’ became a dream of losing the one you love, asking them to reassure you that it won’t come true and to dream, instead, of all the time you’ll have together as you grow old side by side. Every once in a blue moon, it feels good to slough off the macabre and to simply let love be.”
In an interview with Rolling Stone, Cain opened up about her creative process and says she has multiple characters and generations all tied to the same universe across her albums. “This is going to be 15, 20 years from now,” she says. “I work very slow. That’s how I like it.”
