Perverts by Ethel Cain review: enter this dark and twisted church of stomach-churning ambient doom
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A January release is perfect for Perverts – this is 89 minutes of haunted ambient music to listen to while staring at a freezing desolate wasteland and contemplate faith and death. Ethel Cain, aka Hayden Anhedönia, may be a buzzy young indie pop artist and her sophomore album might have a shock-value name, but this is one for the dark ambient music freaks and horror film fans.
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Opening and title track Perverts welcomes you to a dark and twisted church, with a hymnal Nearer My God To Thee that slithers into a distorted soundscape where, if you can strain to make it out, Cain intones that “heaven has forsaken the masturbators”.
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The dark pull of self-pleasure is a recurring theme, with Onanist opening on Cain imploring “I want to know love. I want to know what it feels like” and ending on a refrain of “it feels good”. Anhedönia, a trans woman, named herself for the inability to experience pleasure. But isn’t all good art a little masturbatory?.
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Things only get darker. The lyrics of Punish hint at a paedophile who was shot on live TV in the Eighties. Houseofpsychoticwomn layers lower distorted mutterings over a terrifying whirling sound that oscillates like an industrial fan or the pulsing of blood in your ears.
Moaning, ragged breaths and growls echo into mantras beneath Cain’s repeated insistence “I love you”. Pulldrone is 15 minutes of Cain listing transgressions over a drone that sounds like a violin being bowed to death. Yes, Pervert’s tracks are shockingly long. But in a moment in music where songs are desperately short to begin with, all the better for being vivisected for TikTok trending sounds, it’s good to train your focus. And if it’s less accessible to the casual fan, that’s probably by design.
