Ethel Cain – Perverts

The titular opening track on Perverts opens with a distorted, old-timey performance of Nearer My God To Thee, which would not feel out of place as the intro to a religious true crime documentary. What follows, though, is somehow even more unsettling. An eerily hushed indie horror-game soundtrack that slowly unfurls and abruptly ends with what seems to be Cain’s tagline for this release: 'It’s happening to everybody'.

Lead single Punish is perhaps the closest thing to the Ethel Cain we know from 2022’s Preacher’s Daughter, but it is abundantly clear that this visionary artist wishes to break the ‘dark pop princess’ mould that hits like American Teenager set up for her. Each track on this project is its own nightmarish smorgasbord of all-consuming imagery and sonic worldbuilding. Housofpsychoticwomn, for example, is a foreboding grandfather clock, a cattle-collecting tornado, a demonic possession disguised as a marriage, the ungodly retches of a Xenomorph, and the ominous hum from a refrigerator all at once. Thatorchia is the muffled rain on a sunroof banging around in a hungover head, brought into relief by a chorus of snowy apparitions.

Cain also toes the line between tenderness and lechery on tracks like Vacillator and Onanist, and develops her lore on Pulldrone in which she lists off her ‘12 pillars of simulacrum’. Perverts is Hayden Anhedönia’s first big step in establishing Ethel Cain as a character, a world and an idea, not just another ephemeral popstar pseudonym. 

Listen to: Housofpsychoticwomn, Vacillator, Etienne