Album Review: Ethel Cain – Perverts
3 min read
With her debut album Preacher’s Daughter Ethel Cain became one of the most talked about indie songwriters. Songs from the album found their way onto Barack Obama’s “summer playlist” and Taylor Swift’s pre-show tracklist. An unexpected legacy for a narrative album that tells the tale of a girl fleeing religious life in the Southwest and ending up murdered and eaten by a man she meets along the way. The darkest elements of Cains’s work come to the forefront in Perverts, as she turns her hand to an industrial sound paired with sharp often disturbing lyrics.
The title track opens the album leaving you with no doubts as to how it will play out. The twelve-minute-long Perverts utilises samples of church hymns played as if on an old-style tape player, combined with droning roaring industrial sound. The only lyrics come spoken in a harsh tone, almost akin to a sermon, the final line “it’s happening to everyone” sounding close to a threat. Many of the tracks continue in this style, in Houseofpsychoticwomen the words are so distorted as to render the lot incomprehensible beneath the churning production, and when the phrase “I love you” becomes clear it bursts from the noise deliberate and disturbing.
No song on this album comes under 6 minutes long, with many stretching over 10. It’s a testament then that one of the album’s most powerful songs is the 15-minute Pulldrone. It starts narrated in a slow dreamy voice by Cain. She lists twelve sins drawing inspiration from texts as removed as The Bible to Harlen Ellison’s body horror classic “I Have No Mouth and I Must Scream”. Cain’s voice rises from apathy to despair overlayed with a droning industrial sound that slowly takes over drawing her voice out altogether. The rest of the track fades in and out of this noise creating a feeling of intense despair, Cain has mentioned a desire to soundtrack horror movies and Pulldrone starts to sound like an audition for this.
The tone of the album moves back and forth between the often overwhelming noise that defines Houseofpsychoticwomen and Pulldrone and a softer more melancholy style. The final track Amber Waves is a beautiful track imbued with despair and a slow piano backing. Cain’s strained vocals create a feeling of complete heartbreak as she sings about driving a lover away. The melancholy style is best encapsulated in Vaccilator a song that strips back the production fully bringing tragic lyrics to the forefront. Cain sounds despairing as she sings “If you love Me keep it to yourself”.
Perverts is an album that will divide listeners both inside and outside of Cain’s fan base. The d industrial noise that defines the album will alienate some and intrigue others. But Cain has never been an artist that puts much stock into being unobtrusive, and Perverts proves that she has a unique talent for crafting powerful tracks that will leave you thinking long after you listen.