Ethel Cain’s latest album, Perverts, is a sharp departure from the haunted Americana of Preacher’s Daughter. If her 2022 debut mapped a Southern Gothic narrative of faith, familial trauma, and martyrdom, Perverts is a harsh confrontation with desire, decay, and defiance. The album avoids easy categorisation, leaning into experimental production and fragmented storytelling that feels deliberately unruly—as though Cain, Hayden Anhedönia’s musical persona, is both exorcising demons and summoning new ones.
Anhedönia has always been an architect of worlds. Ethel Cain is not just a singer-songwriter persona; she’s a character deeply embedded in an evolving story. The Cain we met in Preacher’s Daughter was a tragic figure: a girl born into religious oppression, seeking love and freedom, only to meet a grim fate. Perverts doesn’t pick up where that story left off. Instead, it shatters the narrative timeline, dragging Cain’s ghost through contemporary chaos — a liminal space where Americana meets industrial noise, and sacred imagery is defiled by lust and nihilism.
Ethel Cain’s story is a tragic and fundamentally American tale. Born in a devoutly religious small town, she grows up under the weight of oppressive beliefs and societal expectations. Her world is one of patriarchal control, where women are seen as vessels for purity and subservience. Longing to escape, she flees her hometown in search of freedom and self-discovery, but the road she travels is dark and filled with peril. Along the way, she encounters violence, exploitation, and betrayal.
In Preacher’s Daughter, Cain’s story culminates in her death at the hands of a man who promises love but brings destruction instead. Her tragic end—murdered, consumed, and forgotten—becomes a metaphor for the fate of women who challenge societal norms. However, her ghost lingers, refusing to be silenced. In Perverts, Ethel Cain returns as a haunted figure, embodying both defiance and despair. Her journey is no longer linear but fragmented, reflecting the disjointed and often chaotic nature of identity and trauma.
Musically, Perverts is more abrasive and less accessible than its predecessor. The album opens with dissonant synths and distorted vocals that feel more like a fever dream than a hymn. Tracks like “Baptism of Filth” and “American Perversion” are saturated with static and fractured melodies, blurring the line between beauty and ugliness. There’s a deliberate tension in the production—moments of serenity are quickly drowned in chaos, reflecting the album’s themes of moral degradation and spiritual unrest.
There’s an eerie, dreamlike quality to parts of the album that reminds me of the work of Kate Bush, particularly tracks from her Hounds of Love album. The whirring noises and fragmented voices evoke songs like, “Waking the Witch,” “Under Ice,” and “And Dream of Sheep,” where crackling, disembodied voices create a sense of unease and disorientation. It’s as though the listener is slipping under anaesthesia, catching segments of conversations from another room—or perhaps from another plane of existence. This hallucinatory atmosphere enhances the feeling that Ethel Cain is trapped in a liminal space, suspended between reality and nightmare, past and present.
Lyrically, Perverts is more cryptic, though no less visceral than Preachers Daughter.
Where Preacher’s Daughter painted its narrative in vivid detail, this album opts for abstraction. Hayden alludes to themes of voyeurism, shame, and liberation through the lyrics, often delivered in a monotone drawl. Cain’s voice remains a powerful instrument, capable of conveying both vulnerability and menace. In Preacher’s Daughter, her voice was often steeped in reverb, evoking the echo of a church choir. Here, it’s more confrontational—closer, rawer, and occasionally buried beneath layers of distortion.
Comparisons to Anhedönia’s earlier work reveal a deliberate departure. Preacher’s Daughter was steeped in nostalgia—both musically and thematically. It drew from the sonic palette of 1970s rock and country, conjuring a world that felt both familiar and ancient. Perverts, on the other hand, feels resolutely modern. It’s less interested in suggesting a specific time or place and more concerned with dismantling the structures that Cain once revered. The religious imagery that permeated Preacher’s Daughter is still present, but it’s twisted and corrupted—more Lynchian nightmare than Southern Gothic romance.
There’s a purposefully confrontational quality to Perverts that may alienate some listeners. It’s not an album that seeks to comfort or console. Instead, it demands engagement, forcing the listener to grapple with its themes of moral ambiguity and spiritual decay. At times, it feels like a performance piece—a theatrical exploration of sin and salvation that refuses to offer easy answers.
Ultimately, Perverts solidifies Ethel Cain as one of the most compelling and enigmatic figures in contemporary music. It’s an album that challenges expectations and pushes boundaries, both musically and thematically. For those willing to embrace its chaos, Perverts offers a raw, unflinching look at the darker corners of human desire and identity. It’s an album that lingers—much like the ghost of Ethel Cain herself.
Edited by Cameron Cade
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