It Has Happened to Us All: Ethel Cain’s ‘Perverts’
If Ethel Cain’s “Punish” forced us into a dark corner, Perverts cut our power and tied us to a chair. The album, to some, may seem like a one-off from her previous work, but it showcases one of the 21st century’s most unabashed artists in an element we have never seen before. Filled with droning, distortion, and everyday noise, Perverts was sculpted into a body of work that, all at once, is miserable, sexy and reflective of the self-indulgence Ethel Cain has experienced making the album.
PHOTO BY SILKEN WEINBERG
The album’s title track opens with a short, reverbed version of the Christian hymn “Nearer, My God, to Thee,” which resumes her previous religious inspirations. The repeated verse of “Heaven has forsaken the masturbator,” soaked in reverb, serves as the perfect opener to an album that explores self-gratification, particularly through sexuality. The verses are sparse but are interjected by distorted droning that immediately makes the listener feel like a spirit has just made itself known. Followed by the album’s only single, “Punish,” Ethel Cain sets the album precedent of the sin of self-gratification, onanism as she later calls it.
“Houseofpsychoticwmn” has the highest level of distortion on the record and begins with what seems like a ticking clock that gets louder and louder until the droning begins. It takes its name from Kier-La Janisse’s book “House of Psychotic Women,” which delves into female neurosis in film. The track emulates this with its insistent droning, making us feel as if our heads are spinning as the droning picks up speed. Littered with unintelligible lyrics about desperately wanting a love to find its way back to you to fulfill its promise, “Houseofpsychoticwomn” does make us feel desperate. The only intelligible lyric in the tracks is the repeated “I love yous” that bookend the track, driving home the unceasing desire and need for something to make its way back.
Beginning with slow drums and a light crash of cymbals, “Vacillator” takes its name from a type of lover in search of the perfect relationship and idealizes their romantic partner, only to respond in violence or anger when they face reality. The album’s eroticism spikes with this track as slow guitar parallels the unending drums. Cain showcases her ability to emulate the lilting nature of a vacillator with her musicality and implores you to move slowly with the song. Ethel Cain accentuates the vacillator ideal by describing the intense, aggressive attraction to one’s lover: “You’re so smooth / If you want, you can bite me / And I won’t move.” She furthers the idea of aversion to reality by singing, “You won’t lose me to thunder or lightning / But you could to crowded rooms,” insisting that being faced with the reality of engagement with others is a turn-off.
The next verse explores the sexual gratification of bringing your partner to climax multiple times in a row to avoid having to deal with any real problems. The track closes with a repetition of “If you love me, keep it to yourself,” demonstrating the vacillator’s inability to face reality once again. Saying you love someone makes what is being experienced a reality, which is all they are trying to avoid.
“Onanist” presents the idea of being lost at a crossroads, aptly placed in the middle of the record. While the title suggests that the song is about an onanist, or a masturbator, onanism can also refer, broadly, to self-gratification –– what “Perverts” serves to explore. With quoted lyrics from Cain’s song “God’s Country” (2021) –– “There before the grace of God go I” –– the song careens into intense noise with vocalization before “It feels good” rides out the rest of the song as brown noise intensified. With a pause between “It feels” and “good,” we get the sense that Cain has finally chosen the path of self-gratification and is realizing that giving in to yourself is worth it.
“Pulldrone” goes through Cain’s 12 pillars of the simulacrum – apathy, disruption, curiosity, assimilation, aggrandization, delineation, perversion, resentment, separation, degradation, annihilation, and desolation. In short, the simulacrum is something that depicts what is real but is not actually that thing and can be an unsatisfactory depiction.
As she explores the 12 pillars through spoken word, the soft droning in the background slowly intensifies, building the album’s horror element. It is reminiscent of Ari Aster’s 2019 film Midsommar, with an anxiety-inducing hurdy-gurdy that fills you with a sense of dread. At this point in the album, I felt I had been drugged; my face was buzzing in alignment with the sound of a gong. “Pulldrone” is where you and the music become one. If you weren’t fully immersed in this world yet, you are now.
Accompanied by Paul Stretched rushing water, “Etienne” is a piano instrumental track that brings a much-needed softness. On her Tumblr, Ethel Cain references architect Etienne Louis Boulée as an inspiration because she sees him as the first to “conceptualize the temple of simulacrum's architecture.” With elements inspired by Grouper and acoustic arrangements from her friend Bryan De Leon, the track calms the listener down. The sample at the end is from sermon tapes and details a man who wants to die from a heart attack, so he runs until he collapses five days in a row. On the fifth day, he decides he doesn’t want to die anymore. Much like the structure of the album so far, it begins in despair and ends in euphoria.
“Thatorchia” is the second instrumental track on the album and pitches us back into the album’s familiar darkness. The song wavers between slow and fast droning sounds as a vocal loop of Cain’s voice rests on top. “Thatorchia” intensifies a feeling of ascension as the background noise becomes consuming. As the song ends, all the layers come together as one before they drop off and leave us alone with Cain’s vocalization.
The record’s final song, “Amber Waves,” forces us to take in the miserable aura of loss through long stretches of instrumentals that break up each verse. It pulls the same ideals that follow young Seth in the film The Reflective Skin, which Cain referenced in a teaser on Instagram in April 2024. But while Seth deals with the deaths of his friends and father by talking to an “angel,” Cain’s protagonist turns to pills to rid herself of love’s memory.
Cain wrote on her Tumblr that “Amber” is “the personification of love cast aside to get high.” Throughout the track, this character revels in their self-despair: “I still kick rocks when the walking is good / And pretend at the chain link that I am the wood / As I'm leaning my head back / Saying ‘Take me, I ain't gonna scream’ / Yеt here I am empty.” The addiction of a person, of self-indulgence, of love is then flipped and turns instead to what was being avoided the entire time: dealing with one’s self.
Throughout Perverts, there is an overwhelming sense of being addicted to self-servitude, yet it ends where it started: with the idea that there is no escaping the self. Steeped in Ethel Cain’s signature lyricism and vocals, Perverts is a force to be reckoned with. It is an album that may not be for the casual listener but has brought the underground micro-genre of drone music to light for those who didn’t know it existed.
Let go of your expectations of what music should be, allow your power to be cut, submit to being tied to the chair, and experience what music can be.
