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REVIEW | "Perverts" by Ethel Cain

Writer's picture: Caitlin TaffCaitlin Taff

"No, I just really like drone music and wanted to make some," Ethel Cain says in response to an anonymous Tumblr user asking, "Is it true you're trying to push away from the more mainstream sound to draw in a closer and intimate audience?"


Ethel Cain by Silken Weinberg
Photo by Silken Weinberg

'Perverts' is more a project in atmosphere than it is an album. It never once tries to draw the listener in with catchy melodies, opening with a twelve minute title track that hums out the sinister distortion of a 19th Century Christian hymn in between ringing silence, and so the assumption that it is borne from a rejection of chart-hits after the virality of 2022 single, 'American Teenager', is an understandable one. However, growing more and more ominous as the track whirs on, it becomes clear that 'Perverts' is setting out to do what Ethel Cain has always done best, and that's tell an enticing story.


Think of a horror video game, with all its twists and turns; the haunting quiet between the action, the lurking danger in the shadows. 'Perverts' can take you to a million and one places, which is the beauty of it, but for me it's so reminiscent of that unsettling gut feeling that becomes all-immersive. It's not real, in as much as logging off - or in this case, taking your earphones out - makes it all disappear, but it is real for the feelings it awakens, the human instinct of unrest that remains long after.




After eerie crackles and mangled electric bass, the dulcet tones of Ethel Cain come shining through like a blood moon through the dark, or the headlights of a car pulled over in the fog. 'Vacillator' is stunningly haunting, minimalist in its production, slow drumbeat and slow, country-ballad-esque guitar. Alongside closing track, 'Amber Waves', this is 'Perverts' at its most melodic, but certainly not as respite from the unease. In a beautiful echo of harmonies, she sings "If you love me / keep it to yourself."


Whatever Ethel Cain might do next, it's clear that she'll be driven by unapologetic passion for the things that fascinate her and the stories she wants to tell through sound.




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