Content Warning: This story mentions explicit sexual content, pedophilia, child abuse and violence.
Ethel Cain, the stage name of singer Hayden Silas Anhedönia, released the experimental, drone-music project “Perverts” on Wednesday, exploring familiar themes with a jarringly new sound.
The project does not continue the storyline begun in Cain’s 2022 debut album “Preacher’s Daughter,” which tells character Cain’s story from her upbringing to her murder. Instead, the long, slow tracks on “Perverts” explore sex and, of course, perversion through a variety of unnamed narrators.
The project opens with its title track, a 12-minute, lyrically-sparse track that sets the tone for the rest of the album. Barely audible, Cain repeats variations of, “heaven has forsaken the masturbator,” before stating, “it’s happening to everybody,” a line Cain teased in a short story shared on her Tumblr in October 2024.
The lead single, “Punish,” tells the story of a pedophile who was shot by the father of the child he abused. The pedophile is “punished by love” and physically harms himself to replicate the pain of the bullet wound. The song is unsettling, and I initially wondered if this perspective was a necessary addition to the project. However, the piece fits perfectly into the weird, beautiful, atmospheric puzzle that is “Perverts.”
Cain’s discography has a history of focusing on dark and twisted parts of the human experience, something casual listeners of her breakout hits may miss. Cain is an anomaly in the pop star world and constantly tackling subjects other stars may be hesitant to even name. Idiosyncrasies like these have led to her well-deserved cult status.
“Perverts” warrants at least one complete listen-through, ideally alone and in the dark. With each track, the listening experience grows more uncomfortable and almost haunting. Cain has created an atypical project completely outside the norm that continually builds upon itself, constantly prompting the listener to wonder whether to hit the pause button or let the atmosphere fully consume them. It’s overwhelming and disquieting, but I believe its ability to make listeners feel so disquieted is a sort of superpower.
Featuring resonant vocals and drums absent on other tracks, “Vacillator” is the project’s standout track. In this song, a lover teeters between their desire for isolation and obsessive love, singing, “Close the door. Let me in.” It depicts a tension most other tracks don’t. The speaker is not yet consumed by their perversion, but they wobble on the brink. Cain gives them the option to escape their love, while other speakers are already too far gone.
“Onanist,” the shortest song at six minutes and 30 seconds, precedes “Pulldrone,” the longest at over 15 minutes. “Onanist” features angelic vocals in which the speaker expresses their need to know love, while the spoken word lyrics in “Pulldrone” — fittingly accompanied by a sometimes sputtering droning in the background — continue the imagery of sin. Cain’s trademark religious thematicism remains a throughline of the project, satisfyingly connecting even the most disparate tracks.
The penultimate instrumental track “Thatorchia” is accompanied by Cain’s humming that leads into the conclusion of the album, “Amber Waves.” In this final track, the speaker’s lover, Amber, leaves them “empty,” intoxicated and “in the catatonia.” Cain closes the project, a piece rife with all-consuming emotion, by saying “I can’t feel anything.”
Cain pulls no punches with her listeners; she brazenly exposes us to the darkest of the dark and forces us to sit with it. As expected, this conclusion offers no comfort or optimism in the best way.
Throughout her project, Cain successfully uses the mundane to address the perverse. The constant droning one might hear from a power line or lawnmower become a haunting, poignant soundtrack to Cain’s narration of the recesses of sexuality and dark facets of humanity.
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