With Perverts, the multidisciplinary artist Ethel Cain brings us her long awaited first major body of work since her amazing debut album Preacher’s Daughter.
The Florida-born artist started out working on and releasing various projects while teaching herself to produce. After moving into the basement of a church in Indiana, she wrote, produced, recorded and mixed her 2021 EP Inbred from there all on her own. Her critically acclaimed debut album Preacher’s Daughter, released in 2022, was four years in the making. Numerous critics hailed the album one of the best of the year, further earning praise from The New York Times, NPR, Vogue and more.
Known for her subversive musical stylings, spanning genres such as Americana, gothic and indie rock, Ethel Cain brings us her newest EP Perverts. In its 90 minutes of runtime, it explores her furthest afield inspirations. It takes us deep into soundscapes encompassing slowcore, ambient, sonic negative spaces and beyond. However, it is not a direct follow-up, but a standalone piece, disconnected from the mythos of the Ethel Cain character.
About Perverts, Cain says,
“Poke a hole in yourself and see what comes out. Don’t tell anybody what it is but keep a little in a tiny glass jar under your bed. Cover all the windows and walls with dark fabric and slice yourself into a circle, multiple circles in the middle of the room. Make it hot and suffocate yourself. Go into the woods and look at how many lines there are. The entire world is about lines and where they intersect.
There is still time to go into the room where there is nothing and stay there forever but know that while you retain freedom of action, so does the world retain freedom of retaliation. You are not immune to consequence. You can do whatever you want if you can handle the return. And if you cannot, then you should hide away so no one sees how hard you cry if you can’t. It’s ok to be weak. You were born like this for a reason.”
~ Ethel Cain
The 12-minutes-long intro to the EP with the same title, “Perverts” takes us straight into the depths of Cain’s soundscapes. Starting out with a short rendition of the 19th century Christian hymn “Nearer, my God, to Thee”, Cain combines a focus on tradition with a distain for self-gratification. Just this hatred is present throughout the entirety of the EP.
Following is a long section of white noise mixed with echoes, droning and other noises. This mixture creates a fascinating, yet eerie soundscape, which is occasionally broken by a loud droning noise, akin to a distorted church bell, or an organ of sorts. The song starkly contrasts the Christian hymn with the profane of sexual nature, viewed as sinful by the church.
“Punish” portrays an inner conflict, struggling with the own fate and the amount of suffering we deal with. It asks how much of it we truly deserve. Punished by love and its consequences, the protagonist takes all their worries to bed, trying to confront and deny the suffering at the same time. While dark and desperate throughout, the lyrics leave much room for interpretation. Is the protagonist the victim? Are they being protected from whoever is causing this harm?
Alongside “Punish“, Cain released a music video, co-directed with Silken Weinberg.
Watch the official music video to “Punish” below
“Housofpsychoticwomn” is another spine-chilling masterpiece of hers. The song sheds light on topics referencing biblical events, one-sided love from a pervert, the mystery of love, giving yourself up to be loved and so much more. It is a struggle of loving and being loved, as well as the dangers it entails when it is insincere and violent in nature. Not only does the song take us into the mind of the “psychoticwomn” through the lyrics, repeating “I love you” over and over again, but also through its soundscapes.
Throughout “Housofpsychoticwomn“, what seems to be the sound of a distorted fan of some kind, plays in the background. This slowly dies down towards the end before returning in an even more distorted state that almost sounds like screaming. Cain paints a sonic picture of the scene which appears to be of the sexual kind. Once the climax of the distorted background noise arrives, it slowly fades and disappears alongside the repeated “I love you.” It feels like a brief sigh of relief, like it is finally over, but then the voices return with an even more violent droning, before a sudden cut.
“Vacillator” heavily plays on the emotion of love. A vacillator is someone who is indecisive in nature, craving connection, but idealizing new relationships. Hence, the most striking line of the song is,
“If you love me, keep it to yourself”
~ Vacillator
Knowing that the titular vacillator might not be able to emotionally fulfill their partner, they resort to rejection to avoid damage to either party.
Alongside “Vacillator“, Cain released an intriguing music video.
Watch the official music video to “Vacillator” below
“Onanist” heavily thematizes the aforementioned hate for self-gratification. It starts out with a lo-fi piano piece, accompanied by white noise and such. Cain then starts with a strongly condensed quote from The Divine Comedy by Dante Alighieri. Here, Cain illustrates the struggle of being lost in the middle of your life, trying to find meaning and wanting to know what true love is. Unable to find and understand this true love, she resorts to the addictive purgatory of self-gratification, ending with the repeated line,
“It feels good”
~ Onanist
“Pulldrone” starts out with a long monologue without any music. After a while, the ringing of a singing bowl sounds, slowly becoming more and more distorted, before sounding like an electric razor. This then turns into a “harmony” of differently pitched buzzing noises, almost resembling distorted bagpipes or violins. The monologue itself is a description of the stages of Jean Baudrillard’s theory of Simulacrum. This describes the idea of a copy without an individual. It also sheds light on the idea of an individual going on a journey, leaving the mundane life behind, searching for euphoria. It is this euphoria they ultimately get addicted to before descending into annihilation.
“Etienne” starts out with a long, distorted and melancholic conversation between a piano and a guitar. It details the story of a man who wants to end his life. He tries to induce a heart attack by running until his body gives up. However, he never dies. So he tries and tries day after day. One time however, he suddenly felt so good that he didn’t want to end his life anymore.
With the pretext of this album circling the topic of perverts, one could assume that the song focuses on the masochistic side of things. It is possible that in this scenario, the man first gains an odd joy from the pain that his attempts cause. This may go so far that he doesn’t want to continue his attempts for the sake of ending his life, but for the masochistic sense of pleasure he gains from it.
“Thatorchia” is a purely instrumental piece making use of heavy distortion, reverb, faint, angelic vocals and such. Purely going by the emotional picture this soundscape paints, with the context of Perverts, it feels like discord morphing into acceptance. If we look at the EP as a journey, at this point there is no turning back from the perversion. Whether it is love, self-gratification, or alike, it is here that struggle sonically turns into acceptance.
The finale of the EP, “Amber Waves” brings the narrative of Perverts to a close. With a melancholic tone, it illustrates the individual succumbing to the addiction to the pleasure. She states that she’ll be alright, however, the following line suggests otherwise.
“Is it not fun to feel
Many other ways?”
~ Amber Waves
While getting used to the addiction makes it feel like she’ll be okay, being under its influence makes her forget what it feels like to be free of it. And with that, the journey begins anew, as she states that she can’t feel anything and the static from the first track returns for a split second..