Arts and Entertainment
By Libby Boehmer, Staff Writer
Ethel Cain’s newest album, “Perverts,” released earlier this month is a significant step away from her previous work but feels more authentic to the artist’s taste.
Hayden Silas Anhedӧnia, the singer/songwriter behind the stage name Ethel Cain, first gained mainstream popularity with her concept album “Preacher’s Daughter.” She crafted a heart-wrenching story of the character Ethel Cain, a young woman who runs away from home in search of some freedom from her southern Baptist roots. It is a deeply disturbing but moving piece of art that gained widespread praise and attention after its release in 2022.
Cain is the daughter of Southern Baptist Deacon, and was raised in the church. She was heavily involved in the choir as a child.
While reception of “Preacher’s Daughter” has been mostly positive, Cain has vented her increasing frustrations with fans reducing her work to jokes and refusing to engage in the deeper meanings of her music.
In a Tumblr post from Oct. 2024, she wrote, “I feel like no matter what I make or what I do, it will always get turned into a f*cking joke. It’s genuinely so embarrassing.”
Enter “Perverts,” an album that not only demands to be taken seriously, but forces the listener to do so by creating an isolating atmosphere with hypnotic and entrapping instrumentals. The entire album feels designed to shock, then entrap, then provoke and deeply disturb before finally leaving its listener to their own devices to interpret what they have just heard. There is no room for trivialization in the awestriking chords of distorted piano and violin.
The first track and namesake of the album, “Perverts,” opens with a distorted hymn that will remind fans of the opening of “Preacher’s Daughter.” The song quickly shifts into an eerie, droning sound that shifts only slightly through the rest of the song until suddenly cutting off at the end. The loss of this noise that initially felt disconcerting suddenly feels like a rug being pulled out from under the listener. This precedent of taking the uncomfortable and making it comforting before being taken again continues on several other songs but remains unpredictable throughout the album.
The nine-song album spans nearly 90 minutes, with the longest song lasting over 15 minutes. Those who love Cain for her storytelling abilities may be disappointed that the majority of this time is taken up by ambient sound, but the little lyricism that is present on “Perverts” is delivered beautifully and hauntingly. Cain takes much inspiration from late 1800s and early 1900s poetry, most obviously on the song “Onanist.” The lyrics, “There, I found me in a long, long wood / Astray, midway of mortal life / Witness to such agony,” sound straight out of a Modernist poem, an era that was deeply experimental, just as this album is.
Thematically, many songs touch on how we as humans deal with guilt and the way it overlaps with love, even blurring the lines of right and wrong.
As such, the speaker in these songs is not always a reliable narrator, which is an interesting parallel to Ethel’s perspective in “Preacher’s Daughter.” On the lead single “Punish,” Cain sings “Only God knows / only God would believe / that I was an angel / but they made me leave.” On the first listen, she sounds like a helpless woman with no control over her fate. Subsequent listens, however, reveal the true meaning behind these lyrics: she feels she has done something so unforgivable that she cannot imagine a single person believing she was ever good in the first place.
“Perverts” is sure to give listeners chills throughout the experience of the album, but that is part of what makes it so thought-provoking. Cain purposefully made this album for one audience: herself. In that way, it is such a genuine piece of art that its fans will be uncovering new meanings and finding their own interpretations long after the last reverberant notes have reached their ears.
