In her newest EP, “Perverts,” Ethel Cain weeps to us. She punishes the listener with sparse deserts of static and droning, broken only by desperate entreaties, somber instrumentation, and the voices of ghosts on crumbling tape. Cain leads the listener through a desolate waste while she explores her experiences with sexual trauma and organized religion.
The opener, “Perverts,” lures us in with a choir: “Nearer, my God, to thee,” they croon. But we are far from God. As a grim rumbling builds in the background, a distorted voice declares, “Heaven has forsaken the masturbator.” The last word echoes, and like a condemnation, repeats: “masturbator,” “masturbator,” “masturbator.” A sound like the lowest note on a derelict organ burns through the track before disappearing. In the final seconds, a voice tells us, “It’s happening to everyone.”
On the following track “Punish,” Cain provides no chance for redemption. Over whimpering and plaintive piano, she laments, “Nature chews on me” and “Only God knows, only / God would believe / That I was an angel, but / they made me leave.” Her nature, her sexual desire, is condemned in the name of its creator, yet it burns stronger than ever.
Cain wrestles with these paradoxes and finds only more agony in “Pulldrone.” Cain recites a series of steps, those that have brought her to her damnation. It begins with a simple curiosity to “see what happens in the room.” What’s inside? Something so beautiful, Cain pledges, that she will “dislocate my jaw to fit it all in.” She hisses, imitating the insatiable serpent in the Garden of Eden. From there, we descend until we reach “desolation”: “Therein lies sacred geometry of onanism / of ouroboros / of punishment / I am that I was as I no longer am for I am nothing.” In search of a solution, she finds either a vicious regress or a brute contradiction. Her shame is both circular and self-inflicted.
Together, “Houseofpsychoticwomn” and “Vacillator” form a diptych of speech and silence. In the first, Cain’s voice is barely heard over whistling and high-pitched beeping. She speaks softly, as if practicing a speech alone in her room. She says: “When you were young, you said you wished that someone loved you / I do.” And she takes away: “Do you think you understand what it means to be loved / You don’t, and you never will.” Who is speaking? And who is being spoken to? These ambiguities haunt this track and the entire album, mirroring the cyclical, iterative nature of abuse. The way Cain is spoken to becomes how she speaks to herself. Throughout the album, Cain can only frame her struggle in the vocabulary of the church; her own speech is that of an unwelcome stranger. But “Vacillator” provides a solution. Cain’s voice floats above sleepy drums and a wandering guitar; she makes one request: “If you love me / Keep it to yourself.” Any speech will only echo the false promise of another.
Ethel Cain speaks nonetheless. Her voice keeps us company amid the dins and drones. She can explain how we got here. She just can’t tell us how to get out.