The multifaceted artist Ethel Cain introduces us to the newest project, Perverts, with her latest single “Punish.”
Ethel Cain, who is known for her subversive musical stylings, spanning genres such as Americana, gothic and indie rock, brings us her newest single “Punish,” leading up to the release of her fourth EP, Perverts, which is set to be released on January 8, 2025. Following her breathtaking debut album Preacher’s Daughter, Perverts, in its 90 minutes of runtime, explores her furthest afield inspirations. It will take us deep into soundscapes encompassing slowcore, ambient, sonic negative spaces and beyond. However, it is not a direct follow-up, but rather a new standalone piece, disconnected from the mythos of the Ethel Cain character.
Some of the tracks on Cain’s pervious album, Preacher’s Daughter, melodically covered the dreadfulness of the topics they deal with. However, “Punish” hints at Perverts being a lot more relentless in confronting listeners with the darkness in Cain’s art. The song introduces us to a sound akin to the moaning and creaking of an old, rusty playground swing, prevailing throughout in the background. As the nature of the lyrics reveal, it creates an effect that feels like a fading memory of long gone childhood innocence. This “moaning” is then accompanied by a quiet piano chord progression before Cain’s hauntingly beautiful vocals set in.
“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?
About the song, Cain said,
“I wonder how deep shame can run, and how unforgivable an act could be that I may still justify it in some bent way to make carrying it more bearable. Would I tell myself it’s not my fault and I couldn’t help myself? Would anyone truly believe that? Would I?”
Alongside the song, Cain released a spine-chilling music video. It goes deep into uncanny territory, with the grainy, black and white aesthetics and dark hallways. Furthermore, this is only amplified by the imagery of Cain slowly, approaching us in an almost ghost-like manner, wearing a long black dress. Likewise, it’s the black veil, hiding all her facial features and the scenes in which she almost merges with the dark corners of the room, rolling up in despair that are guaranteed to bring us goosebumps. While the growling guitars and the eventual reveal of Cain’s face bring some clarity, the video continues to linger in a haunting manner, even after it ends.
Watch the official music video to “Punish” below
About her new project, Perverts, Cain writes,
The Consequence of Audience
As I went there through the long, long wood, I felt no-thing and I was no-thing and I was at ease. The grey ash trees and their mottled plumage were as one with each other, curving and branching to form a ceiling overhead. There was wide separation between trunks, creating vast corridors stretching off in all directions before me, behind me, all around me. O, what praise I could sing of that never-ending dusk fall I spent between those oaks! None came with me, none came upon me, for I was alone and I was at ease. Yet came the day the trees broke, the corridor ended, and I was thrust upon the rocky expanse that was the Great Dark. There I saw first face and heard footstep, few and far between, but I was no longer alone. It was a shameful deed to carry these two naked hands as they clenched hotly, now in full display for all to see. I had never noticed them in the wood, for I was at ease. Here, the taut skin seemed to stretch and sweat, almost glowing, as if exasperated of their own grip. For as I wandered the Great Dark, there was not but grey, barren rock as far as any eye could see. It did make a passerby out of an observer. I saw them trudge by, fingers dipped into their open mouths desperate for wetness, the lolled tongue. There, in the wood, I was the watcher, but here I am nothing but displacing air. Yet, within the smothering toil of my apathy, I had heard the bell. Murmur of God between their slick, bent fingers ruffled the hair on the back of my neck. My muscles groaned against the weight of the skin around them, aching to be set loose.
All at once, I saw, from where I stood, there rose a great dome atop a hill on the horizon before me. Yes, I saw it there with mine own two eyes! The white exterior peered at me with flat orifices obscured through the mist, barely distinguishable from the dark sky behind it, as though all the world beyond the dome was cut from the same slab, only slightly effaced. The convex roof sat atop a disk, held up by great ionic pillars circling the temple. Steps radiated out and down the slope, like ripples in a pond escaping a dropped stone. It was greater than life, greater than the wood, greater than all else which filled this dark, and my gullible delight was that it was all mine. Yes, all mine! One could follow me to it but they could not follow me in. My hands stretched outwards with an audible cracking in the bone as I crept forward there.
I could not tell you the rest. I would not even attempt, for it would change no-thing. To know if I did go completely naked into the theater of the divine. If I did need for no-thing, want for no-thing. If I was then full to the brim, cylindrical pull slid through my gaping jaw into my endless throat. If I saw it there, shimmering through the veil like pearlescent oil over crystal water. If it heard me singing with every atom that formed me, through every orifice and wound I had, polytonal in my begging for it to complete me with the fifth. If it looked into me, saw how I needed to know what God knows and to be with him. If it spoke back to me in flat dissonance, “how couldn’t ye?”
It would be of no good to speak these things to you. In what way I was still returned to the ground, even if beneath it, intact with my puerile need to repeat my-self and my mistakes. Who would not climb the wall for a peer over the edge? The cautionary tale is the fool’s errand, and I am no fool. I am as my hands are; twisting in on themselves and bursting at the seams. I can-not contain the ache for sensation, just as I could not contain the grief as I fell, nor the agony as I crawled my way back to this rocky countryside, and lo! I am on my way there again now. I am, I am, I am! But I will not tell you the visceral details, as you already know them. You all do.
It’s happening to every-body.
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