Music Review: On ‘Perverts’, Ethel Cain’s bleak Americana goes industrial

Only one week into 2025, Ethel Cain has published a unique and challenging album.

“Perverts,” the second studio release from dark Americana artist Hayden Anhedönia, who performs as Ethel Cain, implements a wide range of elements. Post-industrial noise, glacial tempos, layered reverb and ritualistic incantations through dark angelic vocals combine in a jarring exploration of self-satisfaction and self-loathing.

The artist’s first full-length release, “Preacher’s Daughter” from 2022 mixed folk, goth and ambient elements. Cain’s ethereal vocals spun a story of violence, trauma and Southern Baptist confession. Coming in as the second part of a planned trilogy, “Perverts” tells a postmodern horror story through its formidable sound. Where “Preacher’s Daughter” stepped into brutalist musical margins, “Perverts” is aggressively experimental, featuring poetry-slam style exposition, long periods of drone and empty air.

Cain produces and plays a variety of instruments on “Perverts,” including the uncommon bow-string gurdy. Multi-instrumentalists Matthew Tomasi of the band 9million, who also collaborated on “Preacher’s Daughter,” and lo-fi artist Angel Diaz both make limited but impactful contributions to a soundscape that evokes intense isolation.

Finding influence in ambient music and the slowcore sub-genre, much of “Perverts” can sound unstructured at first. A deeper listen through its 90-minute running time reveals careful composition, with the musical elements purposefully slowed down and distorted. In sound as in texts, the listener is left to find pattern and meaning in its sparseness.

The title track opens the album and sets the table for the journey within. It begins with a strident recording of “Nearer, my God, upon thee,” the hymn that Titanic band played as the ship sank to its doom James Cameron’s 1997 film. Almost 40 seconds of dead air ensue before Cain speaks and repeats the line: “Heaven has forsaken the masturbator.” The reverberation intensifies throughout.

The metallic “Punish,” which follows, is one of the more accessible songs. A simple piano progression with 4 chords runs the duration. Cain delivers the lyrics in ghostly lullaby. As she sings “I am punished by love,” a grinding electric guitar engulfs the piano and vocals.

In Cain’s universe, pleasure always ends in pain. Like in “Vacillator,” where she sings, “If you love me / keep it to yourself.”

Cain has made an interesting choice in presenting such a difficult and unexpected second release. “Preacher’s Daughter” received widespread critical acclaim – at least in part due to its anti-pop hit single “American Teenager” – and Cain expanded his fan base by touring with beloved tracks such as the indie artist Mitski and the Grammy Award-winning boygenius. “Perverts” is bound to alienate some of her audience, but as an artistic statement of uncompromising experimentation, its legacy may be to expand ideas about musical boundaries.