Review Summary: 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 f
ucking joke. It’s genuinely so embarrassing.”
While the above quote from Hayden Anhedönia is far from the only shadow that looms over the writhing and uncompromising
Perverts, it is perhaps the most satisfying explanation we have for its confrontational nature, and why Ethel Cain deemed it so important for her ever-growing irony-plagued audience to hear. The runaway success of
Preacher’s Daughter transformed Anhedönia into a star overnight, and subsequently brought her onto an inevitable collision course with stan culture, the evaporation of her privacy, and a legion of supposedly loyal listeners distorting her art and refusing to take it seriously, the latter of which drew her ire more than any other negative consequence of fame. Revelling in its own ugliness, frigidity, and spiritual confusion,
Perverts reads like a book of Hosea for the Internet age, spouting grave and fiery prophecies about humanity’s tendency to twist, use, neglect, destroy, and ultimately succumb.
The gutting theme of disordered and dangerous love dominates the project’s lyrical and ideological underpinnings. While the cold, brutalist title track and the bullet-time explosion of “Onanist” make overt reference to the act of masturbation, it can be read more broadly through the lens of the album as a condemnation of instant self-gratification, an insufficient substitute for true peace and/or spiritual enlightenment. “Onanist”’s repeated outro mantra of “it feels good” both soothes and intimidates for this exact reason, as the supposed sensory cure for Cain’s characters ultimately becomes the wound that does them in. Sometimes, this futile race toward pleasure is run through substances (on the jaw-dropping closing track “Amber Waves”), but it can also be framed as fleeing from pain, with these desperate attempts to escape haunting the chilling “Etienne” and philosophical centerpiece “Pulldrone”, each prison break amounting to nothing more than an Ouroboros eating its own tail. To pervert and degrade is to allow your own nature to eat you alive, and to surrender one’s body to this misguided sense of beauty and love is to break it beyond repair. It’s how the incessant repetition of the simple phrase “I love you” turns “Housofpsychoticwomn” into genuine nightmare fuel, and how “Punish”’s refrain of “I am punished by love” becomes the album’s centralizing concept. Both in her personal life post-
Preacher’s Daughter and in society writ large, Cain bears witness to the devastating consequences of audience, idolatry, deficient simulacra, and the annihilation of the spirit.
All of these elements coalesce most beautifully on the stunning “Vacillator”, which can easily be named as one of the highlights of Cain’s musical career thus far. As the album’s sole track that incorporates percussion, it immediately stands out musically, only to steadily become even more intoxicating as increasing layers of melody, reverb, and downright ethereal vocal harmonizing interlock to create an unforgettable slowcore stew. As the track climaxes, Cain addresses any number of audiences (the narrator’s significant other/her own audience/a higher power/those who have perverted her creative expression) with the admonishment to keep their love for her to themselves, and leave her spirit undisturbed. To juxtapose this request against the album’s warmest and most inviting instrumental is undeniably clever and further cements it as the album’s crown jewel and most memorable composition.
As far as the rest of the tracklist goes, only “Punish” and “Amber Waves” can join “Vacillator” on the list of “traditional” Ethel Cain tracks, which is exactly how she wants it. While primarily instrumental outings like “Etienne” and “Thatorchia” recall the devastating one-two punch of “August Underground” and “Televangelism”, the remaining meat of the record exists in a murky, hostile space of dark ambient and drone. While I believe most established fans will readily adore all the songs previously mentioned in this paragraph, the remaining tracks, namely “Perverts”, “housofpsychoticwomn”, and “Pulldrone”, will heavily polarize and not work for many who enter. Admittedly, each of these tracks did not work for me at different times, primarily because of their lack of Cain’s vocal arrangements, which I have always considered her greatest strength as a performer. Additionally,
Perverts’ 90-minute runtime and average song length of ten minutes could be intended to alienate, and undoubtedly harmed the record’s replay value for me as I continued to dig deeper into it. Perhaps this is the point, or perhaps I’ve missed it entirely. Either way, my respect for these compositions never dwindled because of their bravery and clarity of artistic vision, and I admire the fact that Hayden Anhedönia could not give less of a f
uck what I think of her music in the first place. I cannot in good conscience say that I loved every second of
Perverts, but maybe I wasn’t supposed to. After all, love can be quite a dangerous thing.
