Ethel CainFairview Park, Dublin ★★★★☆The hills are alive at Fairview Park as ethereal Americana singer Ethel Cain materialises amid a sort of grassy knoll that makes it look as if she’s whipping up a dream-pop storm in a garden centre.But there is no beating about the bush for this cult artist from Tallahassee whose music triangulates a woozy course between Lana Del Rey, Mazzy Star and Enya if she were a character in a William Faulkner novel.Even if the fake shrubbery set in the middle of the stage risks coming across as a conceptual affectation too far, Cain is a mesmerising performer. She has a beautifully cinematic voice, razor-bladed one moment, honeyed the next, while her songs hopscotch from homespun pop in the tradition of early Taylor Swift to intriguingly obtuse and challenging drone music. Open-hearted and vulnerable, aloof and occasionally ominous – on a heady summer’s evening, she is revealed to be a singer for all seasons.It’s just as well Cain and her band are so good at conjuring an atmosphere. They are slightly up against it performing in this marquee at East Wall. With grass under your feet and canvas above your head, it’s as if you’ve wandered into the third or fourth stage at Electric Picnic and nothing lies ahead but an evening of portaloos and being kept awake by someone putting on a rave in the tent beside yours.All artists are dedicated to creating their own mythology. This is especially true of Cain, whose real name is Hayden Silas Anhedönia, and who has described Ethel Cain as “a fictional embodiment of her own deepest fears” and “a piece of me”. In other words, ethereal Ethel is part invented pop star, part Freudian deep dive into Anhedönia’s upbringing as the firstborn of an Evangelical Baptist preacher from Florida.In a long Amish-style dress, her hair hanging at shoulder length, this Bowie-style alter-ego goes all twiggy stardust on gripping opener Sunday Morning. Unspooling in its own time, the track is a stark account of trying to escape an abusive relationship. It is couched in vast, swirling oceans of reverb – like a scream muffled by a closing coffin lid – and where Cain’s vocals are held in a sort of suspended animation amid the shoegaze riffing. [ Is Olivia Rodrigo covering Fontaines DC and CMAT the pop artist’s bid to garner grown-up cred?Opens in new window ]She gets through her biggest hit early doors. The tune is American Teenager – a single that conquered the internet following endorsements from Barack Obama, who named it his favourite song of 2022, and Gracie Abrams who recorded her own version. You can see why it has celebs in a tizzy. Here is a twangingly catchy critique of American high school cliches performed in the style of a Taylor Swift song such as You Belong With Me.American Teenager was a life-changing phenomenon. With over 130 million streams and counting, it could also have been the blueprint for Cain’s entire career. But rather than pumping out more of the same she took the riskier option of releasing two separate – and stylistically very different – albums last year. These highlighted her range as a writer – and her ability to make songs both scary and serene.The horror-movie vibes are courtesy of selections from Perverts, an instrumental record of absorbingly unsettling power. The effect is amplified by the imaginative use of stark still lighting and by Cain’s theatrical flourishes – somewhere between Kabuki theatre and a séance gone awry. Yet scary turns to sublime as she delves into the follow-up LP – Willoughby Tucker, I’ll Always Love You - with its dreamlike coming of age ballads that track the “fictional” Cain’s romance with a mysterious stranger. Done and dusted after just over 90 minutes – perhaps she wants to nip off and watch England v Panama – Cain does not outstay her welcome. But what a farewell she delivers as she brings a gorgeously doomy evening to a close with the menacing maximalism of Sun Bleached Flies. Arriving as the first suggestion of night looms over Fairview, it is an electric shock of Southern Gothic mythic-making, framed by gauzy guitar and funereal drums that wax and wane like the sun setting over the bayou.[ Metallica’s Kirk Hammett in Dublin: ‘Right now, songwriting and pop music is crap’Opens in new window ]