Ethel Cain is Inscrutable and Fascinating on Perverts

There are two ways to listen to music by Ethel Cain, the alter ego of Hayden Anhedönia: You can simply press play on the listening device of your choice, or you can dive headfirst into her lore—the Tumblr posts, the YouTube videos, the fan theories on Reddit. Inevitably, those who choose the first path will be drawn to the second thanks to Cain’s heady, mesmerizing storytelling and songwriting. That’s what made her debut album, Preacher’s Daughter , such a resounding success in 2022, as it explored generational and religious trauma and the false promise of the American Dream through a prismatic collection of heartland rock, slowcore, country, noise and more. 

Cain’s new EP, Perverts, was initially conceived as a concept album about various types of deviants, as she noted on Tumblr. With the exceptions of the second and the last tracks— “Punish” and “Amber Waves”—that changed. Perverts still ruminates on distorted desires, but it’s also an exploration of drone and noise, a treatise on what it’s like to watch and be watched, and an aural Rorschach test. Trying to discover what exactly Perverts is about is something of a fool’s errand, and Cain tells us as much in “The Consequence of Audience,” a rather oblique allegory she shared as an explanation of the album. In it, she emerges from a comforting forest into the terror of the Great Dark, only to be drawn to a majestic dome on a hill—perhaps a symbol of her own interiority. “One could follow me to [the dome] 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,” she writes. Whatever you decide Perverts is saying or trying to say says more about you than it does Cain. And no matter what your conclusions about the album are, Cain’s impressive artistic heft keeps us coming back like some sick gravitational pull. 

Perverts begins with its title track as it intends to continue: inscrutable, alienating and deeply fascinating. There are some hallmarks of Preacher’s Daughter here, like the haunting ephemera of the lo-fi hymn recording at the very start, but even so, the sound here is stranger and more distorted. Muted beeping passes from ear to ear and wind-like brown noise (a slowed-down field recording from near Niagara Falls) rushes in. Cain’s penchant for religious imagery remains strong as a muffled, robotic voice informs us that “heaven has forsaken the masturbator” and that “it’s happening to everybody”—in short, none of us are without sin.

The ambient noise becomes almost oppressive before it abates, and every now and then buzzing synth tolls briefly, leaving us with an ominous echo. In this vast, ambiguous soundscape, you can start imagining things. It left me with the same eerie feeling as the creepy, extended still shots from Skinamarink, in which you think you see something lurking in the blurry darkness, but you can’t quite be sure. “Housofpsychoticwomn,” named for Kier-La Janisse’s book on horror movies’ portrayal of mentally ill women, follows in a similar vein—and there’s even some moments similar to that ghastly sound from The Grudge for good measure. The oneiric quality of the track can’t be understated; the muffled voice that soliloquizes to us before repeating “I love you” over and over again has that dream-like quality of feeling like it’s just out of reach. 

“Punish” is a definite stand-out track, starting with ponderous, lo-fi piano until it builds to a wall of sound moment that reverberates in your chest. One of the remaining original demos for Perverts, this song was written “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,” as Cain explained on Tumblr (with the important caveat that “the song can be whatever you want it to be”). There’s a dark irony to her use of a creaking, rusted swingset on the track—invoking a dilapidated symbol of childhood on a song about a pedophile. 

With Cain’s signature ethereal vocals and more solidly defined instrumental sounds, “Vacillator” may be the most accessible track on the album—and even then, it’s over seven minutes long. Matthew Tomasi’s drumming starts off slow and faltering, falling into a soft rhythm that complements Cain’s languorous delivery. The sweetness of her voice belies the words she’s saying, as she revels in the thin line between sex and violence: “I like that sound you make / when you’re clawing at the edge / and without escape.” “Onanist” likewise plumbs sexual depths—in case the title, meaning “masturbator,” didn’t tip you off. “I want to know what love feels like,” she implores. Cain exquisitely juxtaposes her ecstatic, pristine voice with the dark, dirty fuzz of lo-fi piano and electric upright bass. Falteringly, she concludes: “It feels good.”

The prayer-like lyrics at the start of “Pulldrone” feel like a callback to the conclusion of the doom-drenched Preacher’s Daughter track “Ptolomaea.” The throughline of sex, and in particular masturbation, remains at the fore as Cain outlines “the sacred geometry of Onanism, of Ouroboros, of punishment.” This solemn, reverent enumeration is yet another element of Cain’s world-building, which then gives way to the hypnotic drone of her hurdy-gurdy. The nerve-jangling sound brings to mind the work of Irish prog-folk group Lankum; Cain’s music, like theirs, is strongly connected to the past. We’re not the first sinners and certainly not the last. 

After the unsettling tones of “Pulldrone,” instrumental tracks “Etienne” and “Thatorchia” are a respite. The latter is particularly affecting with its screeching feedback and Cain’s ghostly, melancholy moans. We end on “Amber Waves,” the other original demo from Perverts, which is about “love cast aside to get high,” as per Cain. Whooshes of noise come in and out, like a fickle wind, and we can hear the squeak of fingers on guitar strings. Lullaby lap steel underpins the album’s most soothing song by far. Cain’s voice is achingly beautiful as the narrator justifies her choice to stay locked in addiction rather than risk the perils of love: “Cause the devil I know is the devil I want.”

The final track ends with Cain saying in a flat, affectless voice, “I can’t feel anything,” though listeners are left in a far different place. Whether you’re feeling unnerved or oddly comforted, Perverts is an album that, in its all its strange and cryptic ways, demands you feel something. As for me, I’m feeling like Cain should score a horror movie soon.

Clare Martin is a cemetery enthusiast and Paste’s associate music editor.