WARNING: This review contains references to topics that some readers might find uncomfortable or disturbing, such as religion, masturbation, pedophilia, and more. Discretion is advised.
According to Romans 13:10 (ESV), “Love does no harm to a neighbor. Therefore love is the fulfillment of the law.” But the apostle Paul, author of the book of Romans, might have failed to consider that love can, and will, harm through perversion.
Ethel Cain’s creator Hayden Anhedönia seemed to understand this idea when writing “Perverts.” The nine-song, ninety-minute EP is a far cry musically from her previous works in the Ethel Cain Cinematic Universe like her previous album, “Preacher’s Daughter.” Whereas the last record was lyrically crafty, character-driven by the fictional Cain family and well-structured, “Perverts” is full of spiritual monologues with no linear nature outside of song transitions.
That being said, this in no way takes away from the beauty of this record. Just as meticulously as “Preacher’s Daughter” was made, this project demands your attention the whole way through and forces you to engage with the thought that maybe, thy neighbor’s love is not like yours.
In the opening title track, Cain offers her rendition of the classic hymn “Nearer, my God, to Thee,” which is a fitting tone-setter for the EP, but also has a strong personal connection. This idea of being close to God, while originally written from the perspective of Jacob’s dream in Genesis 28:11-12, is instead used as a reference to perversion and masturbation, as seen through the refrain:
“Heaven has forsaken the masturbator
Heaven has forsaken the masturbator
Masturbator
Masturbator
No one you know is a good person
Fast, reckless driving often leads to slow, sad music”
In contrast to the opening hymn, this person is nearer to God in the same way Trent Reznor was nearer to God in “Closer.” through their vice of masturbation. The closing line to this refrain stood out to me most; no person is without their vice. Such as is with most forms of dangerous self-pleasure, they’ll lead to the slow, sad music of funerals, be it gambling, booze, or as this EP explores, perversion.
With “Punish,” the only single from this record, Cain takes on the persona of a pedophile, punished by love as repeated throughout the song. She refers to Gary Plauché in the second verse, which some might recognize as the father who shot and killed the karate instructor who had been accused of sexually abusing Plauché’s son. Shameful, but not regretful, this narrator mars their skin to relive this feeling, pleading “Only God knows, only God would believe / That I was an angel, but they made me leave.” This reinforces the idea that our narrator sees no fault in their actions, but only acts out of love; The same love that God supposedly granted to them:
“Nature chews on me
Little death like lead
Poisonous and heavy
It has always been this way”
Continuing with this theme of the hate that comes with love, track three “Housofpsychoticwomn” treats love like a threat. The thirteen-minute track contains two refrains, at the start and end of the song, monotonously repeating I love you over and over again layered above paulstretched chords and sounds of spiraling. The only verse in this song shows how this love can turn from validation to nightmare, detailing the perspective of a victim of perversion played softly underneath the spinning sounds and stretched-out noise and over-reassurance of “I love you.” Behind all this, the narrator details how they had once received the love of another, but it had left and left them wondering “if it would come back / and love me the way it was supposed to.” The verse closes with the lines,
“It is such a precious thing to be loved
Such a precious, magnificent thing to be loved
Such a wondrous and painful thing to be loved”
Following after, the same voice that continually repeats the “I love you” throughout the track comes in to assure once more, stating hauntingly, “When you were young, you wished someone loved you / I do / I do / I do / I do” before returning to the constant “I love you” that rings throughout the song. Given the title of the track and its reference to the book by Kier-la Janisse, this relationship and the struggle between each character explores the psychosis of love in a hauntingly beautiful way.
“Vacillator” follows immediately with another form of harm through love. By definition, a vacillator is someone indecisive, one who hesitates out of fear, especially in relationships. This is seen clearly throughout the song, with lyrics like “You won’t lose me to thunder and lightning / but you could to crowded rooms” and “Close the door / let me in.” This character isn’t scared of the extremes and could weigh over the other with intensity like storms, but shrivels under the idea of passion and being the one chosen amongst a room full of others. “Vacillator” explores the dynamic of a couple where one is longing for love and the other only providing so in extremes or not at all, recognizing this fact and pulling away to protect the other. The song closes with the repeated line, “If you love me, keep it to yourself,” a sad, desperate plea to end the relationship and avoid hurting another with their love (or lack thereof).
“Onanist” returns to the theme of pleasure, specifically pleasuring one’s self. The term onanist directly means “a person who commits acts that are thought to be sexually deviant,” usually used to describe the act of masturbation, a running theme throughout the album. There’s a comparison to be made to the fall of Lucifer in this song, seen commonly throughout theological conversations and religious works. Isaiah 14:12 originally detailed this fall, “How art thou fallen from heaven, O Lucifer, son of the morning! How art thou cut down to the ground, which didst weaken the nations…”
The first and only verse of this track details how our protagonist was lost, “found in a long, long wood,” and before the grace of God goes, they wanted to know love and know what love feels like. Right as this line hits, brown noise crashes as the narrator chants that “it feels good” over and over, growing more and more distorted each time as they climax and ultimately, breaks their bond to the purity they knew beforehand. Similar to how Lucifer was cast away, this character lost their way and lost their innocence for the sake of pleasure.
Leading directly into “Pulldrone,” similar themes of losing one’s religion ring true as Cain monologues the Twelve Pillars of Simulacra, originally thought of by French philosopher Jean Baudrillard, whom she cited as an inspiration for this project. In the first five minutes of the song, each of the pillars is covered: apathy, disruption, curiosity, assimilation, aggrandization, delineation, perversion, resentment, separation, degradation, annihilation, and desolation. Specifically, the ninth pillar of separation references the fall of Lucifer, with Cain writing:
“I was an angel, though plummeting
The stars are as beams shining through the wheel
I am sure that Hell must be cold”
This also alludes to the classic literature of Dante’s “Inferno,” where the ninth layer of hell reserved for traitors like Satan and Judas consists of a frozen lake named Cocytus. This wouldn’t be the first time that Cain has referenced “Inferno,” as the track “Ptolomaea” from “Preacher’s Daughter” is named after one of the rings of this lake. “Pulldrone” concludes with almost ten full minutes of string instruments being played almost violently until abruptly stopping near the end of the song.
The next two tracks, “Etienne” and “Thatorchia,” continue this sonic theme and are completely instrumental, except for a snippet of a sermon in the former that Cain found when purchasing a box of old tapes from the 1970s and 1980s, as she confirmed on her Tumblr. The sermon tells the story of a man, who decided to attempt suicide by running fast and long to induce a heart attack. After multiple attempts spanning a week, he “felt so good that he didn’t want to kill himself anymore.” Although brief in comparison to the forms of love throughout the rest of the EP, this sermon showcases the idea of love being masochistic. This person, through their pain, inflicted more and more pain onto themselves until finally, the pain became not only tolerable but enjoyable, bringing on this sense of self-pleasure alluded to throughout the album.
The final song, “Amber Waves,” brings forth the final method of pleasure through harm: substance abuse. Through her Tumblr blog, Cain confirmed that the titular Amber represents the personification of love cast aside to get high. The opening to this song comes from a sample (possibly from “Little House on the Prairie", season four, episode seven, although unconfirmed), recommending someone to “take as much as they need to feel good,” never a good method of preventing addiction. In the first verse, Cain details taking the long way home to reflect, as time slows while high and letting the pills roll because “The devil I know / Is the devil I want.” In the brief chorus, Cain asks the listener, “Is it not fun to feel many other ways? / What you do is nothing to me,” a testament to how the pills can bring such comfort that no other form of love matters to them. The next verse, a personal favorite from the album, details the aforementioned walk earlier, with Cain singing:
“I still kick rocks when the walking is good
And pretend at the chain link that I am the wood
As I'm leaning my head back
Saying "Take me, I ain't gonna scream"
Yеt here I am empty
Watching lovе of mine leave
But I'll be alright
Me and my amber waves
I'll be alright, I'll be alright, I'll be alright”
The first line here could be a double entendre, referring to the person still taking these pills even when life is good due to their addiction. The second, which Cain described on her Tumblr blog as imagining yourself more than your physical limitations, can be seen as this person imagining a life where they are more sturdy and strong like that of a tree, as opposed to the thin, hollowed-out chain link fence. They lean back, an act common when swallowing pills, once more and beg to be taken, an attempt at suicide similar to the sermon from “Etienne” as they watch their lover leave, left stuck with nothing but their substances and an insistence that they’ll be alright.
Cain explained that the original concept for “Perverts” was to focus on a different perverted character through each song, inspired by reading the Donald Ray Pollock novel “Knockemstiff.” While she stated that “Punish” and “Amber Waves” are the only surviving songs of when this concept was the plan, it’s clear that this plan morphed into the project we see now: a haunting tale of how the perversion of love manifests itself.
This EP is, to say the least, a tough topic of conversation. But I can imagine that’s exactly what Cain intended with this album. It was made clear that this is not a project meant to drive away the fans who found her through her indie rock hits like “American Teenager,” but rather an attempt to make the kind of music that Cain enjoys. It’s more than fitting that an album discussing these harsh topics of purity, love, and perversion is met with harsh sounds, drone, and ambient noises to go along with it. Cain clarified in response to a fan,
“There's no condemnation or mockery or bias on perverts anywhere. I like objective portrayals. That way you can decide how you feel about it. Do you feel shame in your pleasure or do you revel in it. Do you know the line between right and wrong and do you know what side of it you're on? Etc.
This isn’t a record that you can just be content with reading about online, and it’s certainly not one that will go viral in the same sense as “Preacher’s Daughter.” But at the end of the day, this is a listening experience that requires your attention the whole way through, from the first note in the intro to the final in the outro. “Perverts” is part erotic, part meditative, and fully provocative; Not just for provocation’s sake, but for the sake of art meant to disturb and engage.
“Perverts” by Ethel Cain was released on all streaming platforms on January 8th, 2025.