Album Review: Ethel Cain's "Perverts"
by Austin Krentz
26-year old songwriter Ethel Cain made her debut in 2019 with the EP Carpet Bed. The four songs within are sparse odes to 90s Slowcore (think Red House Painters and Codeine) featuring only guitar and voice. Immediately, her poetic voice shines through. From a musical perspective, she is able to create stark landscapes that are equal parts hollow and emotional. Lyrically, she explores powerful topics ranging from betrayal to abuse to heartbreak to lust. Sung in a deadpan haze and laid under a mountain of reverb, this becomes the basis of the sound she will have the rest of her career.
From here, her music becomes less stark and more comfortable. The reverb becomes a pillow and the melodies more dreary and repetitive until the emotional pain of the lyrics is entirely subdued. This journey into apathy leads surprisingly to a smash hit album: 2022’s Preacher’s Daughter. With lyrics that border on horrifying and instrumentation found nowhere else near the realm of Pop music, it is a testament to Ethel Cain’s will and creativity that she has been able to amass such popularity (including 3 million monthly listeners on Spotify and a spot performing at Summerfest in 2024).
Preacher’s Daughter contains two crucial musical moments. Firstly, the track American Teenager: a facile subversion of Heartland Pop that achieves nothing more than being just as trite as the music it tries to emulate (the track is also her biggest hit). Second, Ptolemaea: a psychosexual dirge of electronic manipulations, insect noises, and distorted guitars all climaxing during a pivotal brain-stem-obliterating scream - one of the most radiant moments in modern popular music. Between these two tracks, two truths become apparent. Ethel Cain is an artist of boundless creativity willing to align musical and emotional concepts in a way few modern artists can. She also cannot write a good Pop song to save her life.
Thus, controversially, her follow-up release becomes the 90-minute Drone EP Perverts (2025). Free of the constraints of Pop music and even free of the constraints of ‘song’, Cain’s music becomes a direct portal to a world she inhabits and a world she controls.
The first track, Perverts (twelve minutes), contains only about 30% actionable sounds. The majority of the track is covered by a quiet and building electronic hum broken up by scant distorted organ tones that eventually take over everything. Obscured vocals sneak in and out with unintelligible lyrics (according to the internet they repeat the phrase “Heaven has forsaken the masturbater”). The second track, Punish, with its lethargic piano and iceberg-esque vocal melody, is perhaps the only song here that could fit among Ethel Cain’s previous works. That is, until half-way through when the volume explodes and the music is finally able to sing. Onanist takes this formula and pushes it even further, even louder, and has even more drama.
The final two tracks are a perfect diptych summation of the album. Thatorchia with its looping and weaving melodic lines sailing over oceans of sound and Amber Waves; a sorrowful and personal ballad stretched out to 11 minutes with minimal instrumentation (the final two minutes being almost entirely skeletal guitar lines). Etienne sees the return of the lethargic piano and couples it with a borderline nauseating Indie-Rock strummed acoustic guitar part.
It is interesting how the more Ambient, Experimental, and Drone parts of the record are more cinematic and less repetitive than the more melodic and song-like sections. Compare Etienne to Pulldrone, a song that only has several notes over the course of 15 minutes. Pulldrone is almost entirely two bowed stringed instruments playing two separate notes. The lower one holds the same note while the upper one alternates. As simple as it is conceptually, it is performed with such vigor and grace that each note change feels seismic. Each of the notes on Punish and Etienne all feel like each other.
Vacillator is perhaps the pinnacle of the album; expertly bridging her experimental tendencies with one of her most heartfelt songs. The key here is the cryptic and resonant drum part that plays throughout which solidifies her fractured music and symbolically returns her to her Slowcore beginnings. On this track and on the rest of Perverts, she combines emotional intimacy with conceptual intricacy. This creates a form of dynamic and powerful music that fills both the soul and ears. It is likely that Ethel Cain will make a return to Pop music, make a return to shorter songs, and make a return to less experimental music; but I hope she takes the time to release more music like this.
Austin Krentz is a farmer and music lover from Berlin, Wisconsin.
