On Jan. 8, alternative musician Ethel Cain released her newest project, “Perverts.” This marks her first release since her 2022 debut album “Preacher’s Daughter,” which garnered Cain critical acclaim and a devoted cult following.
Ethel Cain, aka Hayden Anhedönia, is also a character and the protagonist of much of the artist’s discography. Her work encompasses a wide range of genres and styles, from Springsteen-esque heartland rock to haunting, epic ballads. Cain frequently explores themes like generational trauma, religious indoctrination — particularly growing up Queer in an evangelical Christian community — and sexual violence.
After the release of her debut album, Cain “wrote on Tumblr about the ‘irony epidemic’ that had turned her dead-serious lyrics about sex, death and the divine into meme fodder,” according to Stereogum.
Thus, on “Perverts,” Cain purposefully disrupts the intimate relationship her fans developed with “Preacher’s Daughter.” She is not even deeming the release a studio album, instead referring to it as a “project,” “body of work” and “an EP” in press releases. It’s clear that Cain is focused on making music that will mean a lot to a small group of people.
Cain’s new project sounds nothing like her debut record. The songs on “Perverts” are sparse, ambient and inscrutable.
The project opens with the title track, a 12-minute piece that is inspired by the Bruce Mansfield Power Plant in Shippingport, Pennsylvania, according to a post on Cain’s Tumblr.
“I’ve always had a fascination with great brutalist structures, but something about the smokestacks, cooling towers, and other twisted entrails of the power plants of Pennsylvania truly changed the way I see the world and my place in it last year,” she wrote in the post.
Cain repeats “heaven has forsaken the masturbator” multiple times throughout the track. The phrase connects to the central idea of the project: exploring what mainstream society — particularly heteronormative, Christian society — considers to be “perversions.”
“Punish,” also the lead single from “Perverts,” tells a more discernible story. On her Tumblr, Cain explained that the song is about a “pedophile who was shot by the child’s father and now lives in exile where he physically maims himself to simulate the bullet wound in order to punish himself.”
Cain presents the story in an objective manner in an attempt to understand what drives people to such horrible actions. It’s hard to stomach, but it’s real.
“Vacillator” is another of the project’s more conventional tracks, further exploring the complicated manifestations of attraction. The protagonist of the song expresses a warped sense of desire for another — “I like that sound you make when you’re crawling at the edge and without escape” — but then immediately recedes into shame and insecurity — “If you love me, keep it to yourself.”
The two longest tracks on “Perverts” are “Housofpsychoticwomn” and “Pulldrone,” which clock in at 13 and 15 minutes, respectively. The latter is easily the most challenging track on “Perverts.”
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On “Pulldrone,” Cain takes inspiration from French philosopher Jean Baudrillard’s 1981 text “Simulacra and Simulation,” wherein he discusses the concept of a simulacra — a copy of something for which no original exists. Cain developed her own 12 Pillars of Simulacrum, which she lists on the track.
“I hate change but I need change, and all the while change happened … completely apathetic to my own feelings towards it because in the grand scheme of things, I am nothing,” she wrote on her Tumblr. “Simulacrum became a spiritual vehicle for my own personal Ouroboros.”
The brooding, melancholic “Onanist” returns to the motif of masturbation as an expression of stifled desire, with the speaker declaring, “I want to know love; I want to know what it feels like.”
The track closes with the hushed refrain of “It feels good.”
“Etienne” is primarily a quiet instrumental track until it’s broken up by a spoken-word piece about a suicidal man trying to induce a heart attack by running until he no longer wants to die. “Thatorchia” is an entirely instrumental piece that feels straight out of a horror movie climax.
“Amber Waves,” the final song on “Perverts,” returns to similar motifs from “Preacher’s Daughter” — the picturesque beauty of the American plains and the grotesque underbelly that lies beneath it. The song is rapturous, fully enveloping the listener in Cain’s vision of the dark side of the American Dream.
“Perverts” is a difficult, enigmatic body of work, but one that is sure to reward patient listeners over time.
Elijah Ritch is a freelance reporter for the Daily Lobo. They can be reached at culture@dailylobo.com or on X @dailylobo
