It’s a shame when everyone seems to talk around (not even about) one of the year’s best releases—and it certainly doesn’t help when the artist also shares what she’s deemed a “real” album in the same year, pulling the focus of more fair weathered fans away. Regardless of whether you first checked out Ethel Cain’s January “release” “Perverts” just to hear a supposed middle finger to a more mainstream fanbase and a label situation the artist wanted over and done with, it doesn’t take away from the fact that it remains Hayden Anhedönia’s most staggering full-length work to date.
Mining inspiration from the drone and ambient north stars she’s proudly cited as favourites since 2021’s “Preacher’s Daughter” first pulled her fully into the spotlight (if you’re a Grouper fan, this is likely high on your personal ranking for the year), “Perverts” is an atmospheric exercise, digging to the filthiest, most cryptic core of her sonic obsessions. The grinding whir of “Houseofpsychoticwomn” and bleating strings of “Pulldone” might have driven all the heated conversation for those less interested in Anhedönia’s more avant-garde tendencies, but there are moments of pure salvation (the climax of “Onanist” or the sparse beauty of closer “Amber Waves”) that could convert any skeptic, if they have the patience. Let them talk all they want. I’ll spend my time kneeling at “Perverts’ altar again and again.
Though its nine tracks are almost 90 minutes long, “Perverts” isn’t an actual album, according to its creator. Rather, this drone-inspired record that scared, confused, and put off a lot of Ethel Cain’s fans upon its release in January is an experimental sideshow that has nothing to do with her 2022 debut, “Preacher’s Daughter“, nor the two succeeding records that will complete that narrative trilogy. Except, of course, for the fact that Cain is behind it.
The project is a starkly haunting, harrowing, and challenging piece of music that transports the listener into a wholly unrecognizable world from that of “Preacher’s Daughter” as well as from the proper album “Willoughby Tucker, I’ll Always Love You“, which was released later in the year.
Especially early on during the eerie, old-timey introduction of the opening title track and the periods of near-but-not-quite silence that follow over the song’s 12 minute run-time, it feels like you’re in the pitch black of a horror film or video game, such is the visceral sense of dread and unease that underlines this record. Yet there are (very necessary) moments of sublime and poignant beauty, too. It all makes for a demanding but immensely rewarding listen that marks Cain out as a truly incredible, iconoclastic talent.
The Fat Angel Sings 