drugged-up deities

One of my favourite artists released a new album last week. It’s called Perverts. It’s by Ethel Cain.

         Her last album was the story of an abducted woman called Ethel, the titular Preacher’s Daughter who has a deeply fucked-up relationship (obviously) with her captor. It is tragic and haunting and ends with Ethel’s captor eating her. After a foreboding prologue, Ethel lulled us into a false sense of security with her indie pop hit ‘American Teenager’, a euphoric sound against harsh critiques of the post-Trump US. Soon enough, we are thrown into a sob-inducing ballad that led to the painfully lazy Lana comparisons. Deeper into the album, it gets scarier, more experimental. Perverts takes what begun on the back-end of Preacher’s Daughter and runs with it. The layered cacophony of drone noise makes FINNEAS and Billie’s work look like child’s play.

         I listened to Perverts the night after it was released. I went about my evening chores in a big, empty house, knowing I was going to be late to my plans later because I cannot take my headphones out. Listening to Perverts over the past five days has been an evolving experience. The first time I had shivers skating under my skin. The second blocked out any other thoughts demanding my attention. The third putting me in the dark place I desired to start a new little writing project. This album is like a horror film. Not a horror film that has thirteen year-olds jumping at sleepovers, but one that is obsessed over by the most depraved of Reddit threads.

         It’s ninety minutes, and probably more than half of that is instrumental. It sounds like a God traipsing through heroin addiction, knowing there’ll be no end.

         I don’t think she’s going to be invited back to the British summertime festivals this year.

         I wonder whether the woman behind Ethel (her name is Hayden) feels like a pervert. I wonder whether she thinks that’s a bad thing. I think lots of us think we’re perverts sometimes. And think that that’s a bad thing. Perverts in its definition I mean: abnormal or unacceptable in your sexual behaviour. And that does reflect the album. It is abnormal, unacceptable, a bit vile. It’s caked in blood like your keyboard when you were fourteen. It whispers your most violent intrusive thoughts as if they gave you power, rather than perverting your soul before you ever had the chance to make a mistake. You know the girl from The Ring? It’s like if she fell from the sky, into the middle of Manhattan, and survived, dragging pieces of herself behind her into an asbestos-ridden strip club.