“If you love me, keep it to yourself.“
Hayden Anhedönia began releasing music under the moniker Ethel Cain with 2019’s Carpet Bed EP. Since then, she’s seen somewhat of a meteoric rise, from the follow up Golden Age (featuring the excellent “Knuckle Velvet”) to the breakthrough Inbred. Cain then released her debut LP Preacher’s Daughter to significant acclaim in 2022.
Now trailed by a rabid fanbase, Cain seemingly held mixed reactions to the spike in attention and notoriety. Lamenting what she called the “irony epidemic,” she described typical non-serious reactions to her art as “truly inescapable.” While she shortly described this as drunken frustration, she did also double down on insincere reactions in situations like her sharing of fundraisers for Palestine and in other serious topics.
In this context, the content within her follow-up release, Perverts begins to make more sense. Described as an EP, this nine-track affair actually runs nearly ninety minutes long. Beyond that, it also eschews what fans have come to expect, especially those who joined the ride with Preacher’s Daughter. This stylistic shift does not come from nowhere though, with the third track, “housofpsychoticwomn” available previously on Soundcloud from 2021 along with her work under alternate alias Ashmedaiii. Confirmed not to be part of the larger storyline of her prior work, it does represent a significant push towards the sound she “always wanted”.
The opening title track acts as further proof of this, and one of the most drone-inspired tracks on the album. Starting with the reciting of a hymn, it is aesthetically aligned with the Southern Baptist influence of previous work. However, most clear narrative falls away there, other than one repeated line: masturbator. While this is the through line behind Perverts, probably by design it eludes most deeper analysis without consulting footnotes like a modern translation of Dante’s Inferno.
Whatever’s wrong with me,
I will take to bed,
I give in so easy,
Nature chews on me.
Lead single “Punish” mostly closely resembles a typical Ethel Cain number. Driven largely by slow piano pings and whispered vocals, this track alone could ostensibly feel at home on Preacher’s Daughter. Even so, the tempo pulls along at a crawl with sparse instrumentation for most of its length. In the final third, loud guitar chords, gaining in feedback and distortion to begin to overwhelm and take over the song.
These two tracks signal the direction the album takes at large. Some tracks stand as ambient and drone pieces with some spoken word elements, like the barely audible recitations and I love you refrain in “housofpsychoticwomn”. These often come across more as style over substance, with atmosphere building at the center. On the other hand, “Vacillator” features actual percussion and closer “Amber Waves” has something resembling a chorus. These are obviously the easiest to penetrate and help to shape the more elusive segments of the album.
Ultimately, Perverts acts as a rejection of the fame Ethel Cain accumulated over the past four years. Gone are the ironic pop sensibilities of “American Teenager” that helped it blow up across social media. Instead, in its place we find a confusing, sometimes stilted collection of slowcore and ambient work that many likely won’t find enjoyable, which appears to be the intention.
That is not to say that Perverts lacks merit – on the contrary, it can wash over you and envelop you in a way that Cain‘s previous work eluded to, but never committed to. Here, on tracks like “Onanist” and “Etienne“, any sense of structure melts away. In its place, the bones are laid bare, exposed to the elements, and bleached beyond recognition.
7/10
Ethel Cain‘s Perverts comes out this Wednesday, January 8th.