Ethel Cain – “Perverts”

Filled with statements that contribute to her narrative as an artist, Ethel Cain has released her new project, Perverts, an exploration into her love of dark ambient sounds. The release was preceded by Punish, a song that set the bar for the deep world-building of Perverts and received critical acclaim upon release. Perverts is a new creative high-water mark from Cain, a release that underlies her devotion to pure artistry and fearless commitment. Going back to some months ago, she wrote some words on her Tumblr describing how she felt about this irony epidemic present in the internet culture, with an interesting cut reflecting on how this may affect artists and their aim for creating better, more intelligent and complex art. It’s almost impossible no to link these words to Perverts.

The LP evokes so much that is undoubtedly a challenge to current pop culture; not only the sound that Ethel Cain excels at as a producer, multi-instrumentalist and singer, but also as an artist with the ability to speak of perversion in this context and format. Perverts is a difficult listen; we're not going to lie to ourselves. It's edgy, and it's edging throughout the album (which feels like it's meant to be listened to as a single ninety-minute piece). The experimentation, the drone and ambient music, and the fifteen-minute instrumental tracks don't scream success by the standards of TikTok viral moments, or Spotify hits of the day. But that's precisely why Perverts had to be made: for fans, to acknowledge a different musical experience; for Ethel, as a testament to her talent. So, it is important to appreciate Perverts as something that is more than different. It is, but the challenge here is to go beyond this reductionist idea. What is Perverts really about?

This record is about vision, and quite literally. It focuses on the gaze of the other, on the ear of the listener. It questions the self in yourself. Ethel Cain’s themes are hard to confront when listening to them; they have not easily or commonly been covered in the alternative pop/rock sphere with this depth. Here, the artist pries perversion through the complexities of an unlikeable character. There is a lot of psychology on the foundation of this project; the cinematography lays on the abilities of composing a piece in which she sings from the eyes of a pervert, thinks with the mind of someone who feels shame, and expresses unapologetically what it may feel like.

Perverts, the song, is a twelve-minute intro in which cacophonies and a direct introduction to drone music set the tone for this adventure. This intro is in itself a questioning of the concept of a song that we will find several times again along the LP. Ethel sings the 19th-century Christian hymn Nearer, My God, to Thee, followed by some guitar riffs that stand out during this piece, only to finish with the phrase “it's happening to everybody.” Cleverly conceived, the project places much of the shame in the one who looks at the wrong thing as a universal concept. 

Punish, the first single that we discovered at the end of last year, takes us through a story of shame; more specifically the shame that a paedophile might feel. In the background, almost like a metronome, the sound of a swinging chair runs through the song setting the slow pace as Cain sings “I am punished by love.” Shame is an essential idea addressed here, and the artist doesn't shy away from delving into the character. “I wanted it to feel up close and personal, almost inappropriate,” Cain shared via his Tumblr page when she released the single.

One of the most complex but powerful tracks on the record is Houseofpsychoticwomn. Its structure works as a symphony in which voices that seem to come from the otherworldly repeat “I love you” since the beginning. Waves of sounds and frequencies are part of the sound design that Ethel worked in for this record. As she stated in her NTS presentation of the LP: “I built it [Perverts] on top of field recordings taken next to rivers, underbridges, standing close to humming, buzzing, singing mechanical structures I could find.”

Accompanied by a video directed by Cain herself (real name Hayden Anhedonia) and Silken Weinbergand, Vacillator is about the impossibility of handling the emotion of love for someone, as it is too much for them. The song itself vacillates towards an edge that never seems to arrive; “if you love me, keep it to yourself,” sings the chorus. As in other songs in Perverts, Vacillator is also a beautiful ballad in which less is more, and where the chorus is almost like ‘the’ statement. Cain stands out as a poet whose abilities make her a multidimensional artist. The way the recording in itself is part of the music (art) makes the technics of this piece essential for the sound, and a good example of this is the angelical Onanist. 

The story of Perverts is told through nine chapters in which instrumentation and sound design breathe, giving the whole thing a great sense of narration. In this track, the guitars are back in the form of post-rock, her voice sounds angelical while she sings “I want to know love, I want to know what it feels like.” The constant inner dialogue within the self and God is primarily the voice of the whole album; moral sense and conscience are also two subjects very much present in the narration.

Inspired by Simulacrum and simulation by Jean Baudrillard, Pulldrone is the most experimental music we’ve heard from Cain. Crush or American Teenager are some of the songs that have made Ethel Cain quite well known, and there is an underlined message throughout some of the most ambient tracks of the record: the extent of the songs and the incorporation of a lot of experimentation is proof of her expression and its possibilities as an artist and musician; she’s so much more than a fantastic pop song maker. This cut takes on a religious structure in which Cain mentions the different stages of the perversion process — The twelve pillars of Simulacrum. With several references to ideas from the Bible, the violin takes the lead at the end of the song (played by Ethel herself) as if it were the soundtrack of an apocalyptical where the tale of perversion takes place (the relevancy of the album is brutally current).

Etienne is probably the most beautiful song on the album, led by an acoustic guitar and the piano on what it sounds like a farewell song, that seems to be inspired by Étienne-Louis Boullèe and the concept of the ‘great dark’ ideology. Thatorchia is an instrumental song that maintains the tension through the whole song in which guitar distortion fuses with reverbed vocals. Again, pure sonic edging, moments that are not meant to be bridges or interludes, but main chapters of this story. 

Amber Waves is the closure of the album and probably the most accessible track melody-wise, a song that was teased during her last tour that speaks on withdrawal within the addiction process, in the context of the whole narrative of Perverts. Masturbation is a concept that dwells in a lot of these songs; not quite literally, but more as the experience of feeling pleasure under a moral vision, and the fact of going back at it. Because the look is important here, the visual becomes the concept, and the listener is the subject whose look is defining for the feelings this record direct us to think about.

Influences draw from literature such as Harlan Ellison’s I Have No Mouth And I Must Scream, or Jean-Paul Sartre's Nausea, as well as films such as Scott Barley's Sleep Has Her House and Philip Ridley's The Reflecting Skin. Horror and the hyperreal are part of Ethel Cain's magical universe. This music can be as scary as the world looms. Ethel mirrors the listener, leaving them with questions about behaviour, involvement and ethics. And that's exactly when you know you're in the presence of a competent work of art; when it makes you question yourself, the world and your views.

There is a feeling that is quite present once you have listened to the whole album: the guts to put honesty at the heart of the work but the ability to work on the technical side of the sound to find the right result. Once you find yourself lying in the darkness of your room listening to Perverts (as Ethel herself recommends for an optimised experience), there is the high chance of connection; one over a dramatic story where cinematography is the subtext, the visual becomes the sound. The horror genre is more than just a fun experience in which to be scared; horror says a lot about the psychology of human behaviour.

John Berger stated in essential essay Ways of Seeing, “but to remain innocent may also be to remain ignorant.” In a moment in which significance is losing its meaning, works like Perverts elevate the cultural conversation around honesty, perversion, the need to look and how we do it through a story. One with so many layers as Ethel Cain work has. Before playing the whole album in the NTS presentation, she warns: “some things are just for you.” And the whole project leaves a trace of questions, being the main one about if we are willing to keep it to ourselves, or not.