Ethel Cain's New Album 'Perverts' is Cinematic, Skin Crawling Excellence

When I first wrote about Ethel Cain in July 2023, her debut album Preacher's Daughter was reaching its crest of viral fame, garnering millions upon millions of streams on Spotify and, in turn, a newly expanded fan base that seemed to be slowly turning her dark, twisty, pioneering concept album into meme fodder.

The worship of Ethel Cain (Ethel Cain is mother! Mother is mothering!) as a fringe cult leader whose uncompromising artistic vision treks through themes of sex, love, cannibalism, family, and religion, was losing its soul by veering mainstream.

Even the absolutely gut-wrenching, life-altering Ptolemaea scream had gone viral in a way that seemed to undercut its key place in her discography. Clipped and looped, the diffusion of "Ptolomaea" on TikTok and beyond removes it from the storytelling that is so integral to Cain's entire music project. Ethel Cain lives in the lore, lest we forget.

Enter Perverts: a sophomore album that, as Brad Sanders points out, may more accurately be described as a 'project' or a 'body of work.' "None of the press materials for Perverts actually call it an album."

Many of the early reviews for this boundary-pushing ambient 'album,' including Alexis Petridis' coverage for The Guardian, point to Perverts as a way for Cain to head underground, to rebuff the constant Lana Del Rey comparisons, to decisively turn away those looking for an alt-pop star.

All "pink noise and punishment," Perverts is not for the casual "Crush" listener. It's not a follow-up to Preacher's Daughter; it's a totally different and defiant animal with bared teeth. With this work, Cain rejects her mainstream fame by digging her heels into the ground, continuing to draw this miraculous, muddy line between beauty and horror. This is all quite timely in my eyes, considering the croon of doom and ruin inherent to the new post-Election age of Elon.

One can easily get lost in the dark ambient tracks, some stretching to 15-minute run times, but that’s by design. A proven vocal talent since her Inbred EP, Cain now shows her prowess as a producer and composer, a vibe-curator like no other, in this 9-track line-up:

"Perverts" 12:04

"Punish" 6:40

"Housofpsychoticwomn" 13:35

"Vacillator" 7:44

"Onanist" 6:24

"Pulldrone" 15:14

"Etienne" 8:43

"Thatorchia" 7:24

"Amber Waves" 11:32

In the reigning age of cycling sound bites and laughable attention spans, Cain continues to insist on a wholly consuming long-form listening experience. Here are some thoughts I cataloged during my hour-and-a-half-long journey through this body of work:

The title track that opens the album is immediately transportive and cinematic. You hear "Nearer my God to Thee," like it is being played on a scratchy old record, perhaps from another room. It's Gothic and ghostly. Increasingly warped. Then, silence, which Cain plays with as only a poet can.

Like most of the tracks on Perverts, Cain's voice is almost perpetually muffled from the get-go. Language feels secondary to something more secret and sinister. The overlay of sounds often blends into your own surroundings if you're not wearing headphones. Disorienting and immersive.

As Petridis writes: "The actual music seems to be made up of ghostly echoes of instruments rather than instruments themselves." This is most apparent in the second track, "Punish," in which the tempo is kept by a distinctly sexual vocalization on repeat coupled with some sparse piano chords.

Being the lead single, "Punish" (first released on November 1st) now feels like a purposefully deceptory introduction to Perverts because it comes the closest to the song standard previously set by Preacher's Daughter. Still, its ending spills out into more 'noise rock' territory, hinting at the experimentalism with distortion and walls of sound to come.

Track 5, "Onanist," is like the intro to her song "Inbred" on steroids. As a preface to "Pulldrone" (perhaps the most evocative and challenging segment of the project), "Onanist" conjures the paintings of Zdzisław Beksiński in my mind. It also makes me want to write the next great A24 horror film if you catch my drift.

Track 7, "Etienne," is the most concretely melodic with a meditative acoustic guitar and piano reverb. However, it only marginally holds back the layers of whirring liminal sound that define the entire atmospheric endeavor. SoundCloud Ethel continues to fight for the spotlight and, of course, she makes your skin crawl in the process.

Finally, "Amber Waves" closes the track list by recentering Cain's stunning vocals, which first bewitched me four years ago. In contrast to "Pulldrone" or "Thatorchia," this track feels more subdued.

Unlike the long-winding power ballads from Preacher's Daughter, "Amber Waves" opts for more resolute slowcore instead of the classic crescendo or denouement one might expect. It fades in and out under a palpable weight infused with a bleakness or numbness comparable to her earliest EPs: Carpet Bed or Golden Age.

In all, I think Kristen S. Hé from NME puts it best about the rebellious and revelatory waters that Perverts promises: "For those who are willing to sit with its discomfort, ‘Perverts’ reveals hidden depths – the same way that eyes need time to adjust to low light. What it reflects is in the eye of the beholder."