Ethel Cain's 'Perverts' Is a Challenging Portrait of a Haunted Artist
Photo: Silken Weinberg
Ethel Cain's latest record, Perverts, is a chilling exploration of perversion soundtracked with the frightening bleakness of dark winter. This 90-minute musical journey, her first since the groundbreaking debut album Preacher's Daughter, is a deep dive into sonic negative space. It explores Cain's furthest-afield inspirations, mining drone, noise, slowcore, ambient, and beyond. Suppose Preacher's Daughter was a slow burn. In that case, Perverts will have you sat as it runs at an excruciatingly slow pace, deliciously torturing you as it switches the more accessible dream pop and slowcore aesthetics to long and monotonous ambient drones, fuzzed-out analog horror static, repetitive and non-linear song structures, and intelligible lyrics. To put it simply, it is provocative and demands your attention.
The titular track opens this body of work with a creaking, disintegrating recording of the 19th-century hymn "Nearer, My God, To Thee." Cain chimes in to sing, "Heaven has forsaken the masturbator" over sinister synths creating an unsettling clash of religious iconography and what it considers sinful perversions. This theme has always been central to Cain's work. Still, here, it's made starker than ever before as she guides listeners down a 12-minute-long rabbit hole full of muffled vocals and liminal, paranoia-inducing ambient sonics.
The lead single, "Punish," is an eerie, solitary effort where Cain masks none of her despair over four hollow chords. It's perhaps one of the most beautiful and compelling works she's released to date, despite its squeamish story of a child predator who the child's father shoots and now mutilates themselves to mend the wound. The narrator is punished by their sick love, seemingly denying fault, and allows them to continue to live in this twisted perversion. With her spine-tingling vocals, Cain sings, "Nature chews on me / Little death like lead / Poisonous and heavy," building to a crescendo toward impending doom.
Other standout tracks include "Housofpsychoticwomn" and "Vacillator," which balance the themes of love and lust. The former loops the endearing phrase "I love you" until it dissolves into semantic satiation, and it feels more like you're peering into a mental episode of someone teetering on the edge of an explosive rage. Meanwhile, fueled by a slow and empty snare, the latter track sports a vacillator whose fantasies stagger between the extreme and vulgar and the dismissive and cold.
The closing track, "Amber Waves," hits like "Strangers," the conclusion to Preacher's Daughter. After coming down from the high of this EP and the demented perversions it examines, "Amber Waves" should be the peaceful comedown. Emphasis on should. Instead, behind the plush arrangement and slow and released acoustic guitar, Cain paints a picture of an addict forsaking a lover to get high. The song unfolds patiently without losing focus or breaking its gut-wrenching tension as it follows our protagonist, unable to recover or function normally without the high of their fantasies because normal life doesn't excite them in the same way anymore. That's emphasized in the record's final moments with the line "I can't feel anything," as if the high has taken away their ability to perceive the world normally anymore.
Much like the closing moments of its final track, Perverts is heartbreaking, raw, and an unapologetic honest portrait of a haunted artist.
Listen to Perverts below:
