Album Review: Bad Bunny- DeBÍ TiRAR MáS FOToS
Ethel Cain’s musical craftsmanship reached new heights on Perverts. On January 8th, the Florida native dropped the highly anticipated follow-up to her 2022 debut, Preacher’s Daughter. The nine-track “project” breaks the 90-minute mark, with individual songs spanning over fifteen minutes.
Sonically, Perverts and Preacher’s Daughter diverge quite a bit. The 26-year-old traded in the guitars and percussion that painted her former work for droning power electronics on the ladder. The throughline of these bodies is their success in worldbuilding. Fans fell in love with Cain’s melodic-based storytelling on Preacher’s Daughter, and are given a similar level of narrative via Perverts’ voiceovers and samples.
The project opens with a title track that jolts listeners with a d
istorted selection from “Nearer my God to Thee”, a 19th-century hymn. Later on the track, Cain repeatedly cuts through her self-produced, reverb-heavy, droning to assert “Heaven has forsaken the masturbator.” The next track, “Punish”, was the sole single from Perverts. It contains some of the project’s few melodic moments. Here, electric guitars remind listeners of Cain’s previous work. These sounds, along with the track’s themes of sexual depravation and sadism display how, though the landscapes of her projects may differ, similar darknesses exist within them.
“Houseofpsychoticwomn”, the spookiest track, is pulled from Cain’s vast back-catalog of unreleased tracks. If the melodies and soothing vocals on “Punish” brought any sort of comfort, the constant buzzing atop creaky organ chords just as quickly unnerve you.
The project’s only drums are featured on “Vacillator,” which also might be its best track. A music video was released for the song after the project’s release. Cain’s siren-like, sexiness on the track is inviting. But she calmly warns, “If you love me, keep it to yourself.”
“Pulldrone” is the longest song of them all, and one of Cain’s most impressive to date. Her production is grating but masterful. Her spoken-word countenance of Jean Baudrillard’s stages of simulacrum haunts the recording.
Perverts ends with its final, more structured offering, “Amber Waves”, which provides peace following an hour of tracks that claw, gnaw, and scrape on its listener. It serves as the light at the end of the dark, deep tunnel that is Perverts. A tunnel that you had nightmares about getting lost in as a child that gives you a chill when you think back on it as an adult. Perverts is wildly impressive and an exploration of the bounds of genre. Cain’s career grows more exciting with each release.
-DJ Estrogen Addict AKA Andie Kirby