Ethel Cain
Perverts
Release Date: Jan 8, 2025
Genre(s): Alternative/Indie Rock, Alternative Singer/Songwriter
Record label: Daughters of Cain
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Album Review: Perverts by Ethel Cain
Great, Based on 9 Critics
Based on rating 9/10
Perverts is a quietly devastating body of work from a multi-instrumentalist and vocalist whose grasp of tone, pacing, and production lends almost unbearable emotional weight to what always promised to be an intense musical experience. The temptation to follow 2022's Preacher's Daughter with a collection of similarly chilling songs to propel Ethel Cain (the recording persona of 26-year-old Hayden Anhedönia) to a new level of mainstream fame has been resisted. Instead, she delivers an almost 90-minute project that feels like the aural and emotional equivalent of being slowly, yet willingly, driven over by a 10-ton truck.
Based on rating 4/5
The titular opening track on Perverts opens with a distorted, old-timey performance of Nearer My God To Thee, which would not feel out of place as the intro to a religious true crime documentary. What follows, though, is somehow even more unsettling. An eerily hushed indie horror-game soundtrack that slowly unfurls and abruptly ends with what seems to be Cain's tagline for this release: 'It's happening to everybody'.
Based on rating 8/10
It's a place where everyone is curved in on themself, perpetually upset with the people around them, presented with opportunities to make it up to heaven but unable to let go of their pride. Then, as he's transported to heaven, he peers down and sees hell as just a tiny crack in the pavement - compared to the massive, perfect, overbearing glory of God, it's nothing. I don't know if Ethel Cain's creator Hayden Anhedönia reads Lewis, but Perverts might as well be that book's soundtrack.
Based on rating 7/10
But Perverts is not that record. If anything, it feels specifically designed to blow up that narrative. An EP in name only, its nine tracks clock in at more than 80 minutes. It also abandons tight songcraft and soaring melodies for extended drone sequences, doomy folk dirges and lyrics spoken in a hushed whisper.
Based on rating 3.5/5
If you love me, keep it to yourself. "We are in an irony epidemic…I feel like no matter what I make or what I do, it will always get turned into a fucking joke. It's genuinely so embarrassing.
Opinion: Fantastic
From its very title, 'Perverts' is not an album for the faint-hearted. On her debut album 'Preacher's Daughter,' Ethel Cain (stage persona of Hayden Anhedönia) put the "cult" in "cult following" and emerged with the potential to be the next great indie darling. In her follow-up, she rejects the label entirely with 90 minutes of unsettling industrial noise and spectral vocals.
Opinion: Excellent
Hayden Andehönia, the rising force behind Ethel Cain, wants to be more than a musician. She recently revealed her desire to be a filmmaker above all else, expanding her repertoire and with it Ethel's world, comparing her art to Lord of the Rings and Legend of Zelda, rooted in narrative but with a seemingly endless series of offshoots and side-projects. The notion is carried into 'Perverts', a 90-minute, nine-track opus underpinned by an experimental drone and hushed vocals; a vast sidestep from 2022 debut album 'Preacher's Daughter', it's another layer in an already haunting catalogue of writings, musings and visuals that are steadily forming an expansive universe in Ethel Cain's name.
Opinion: Excellent
Ethel Cain's debut studio album, Preacher's Daughter, was a mix of crisply produced Americana and dreamy slowcore that served a morbid backstory about gendered violence and familial trauma. Despite the album's heavy subject matter, the singer-songwriter's bracing melodies and detailed lyrics offered catharsis rather than despondence. Cain's new EP, Perverts, approaches catharsis differently.
Opinion: Very Good
Cult fame isn't what it used to be. Last year, the opinions of Chappell Roan, a drag artist with one album of 2000s scandalism-inspired pop songs about eating pussy, received more mainstream news coverage than most international conflicts. Charli XCX's ode to doing gear in the club prompted a US Presidential campaign team to state "Kamala is brat". Knocked Loose jumped from the Louisiana hardcore scene to dog barking on Jimmy Kimmel Live, drawing outrage from concerned parents claiming the performance left their children in "tears".