Author: Edward Clark

By Edward Clark

Via her Tumblr, ‘mothercain’, Hayden Anhedönia (releasing music under alias Ethel Cain) repeats the phrase ‘Perverts is for every-body’. Yet her ninety-minute EP Perverts, released in January, has divided her fanbase. For newer fans born from Anhedönia’s success on Tiktok, the drone and ambient-heavy EP lacks the catchy melodies and vocal expression found on 2022’s Preacher’s Daughter and 2021’s Inbred. For dedicated fans of Ethel Cain and Anhedönia’s worldbuilding, Perverts is a departure from the Ethel Cain character and mythology. Anhedönia stated on Tumblr that ‘this next little project has nothing to do with ethel cain lore’ and has no connection to the narrative developed in her previous work. Perverts instead functions as something closer to a thematic set of character studies of different ‘perverts’, initially inspired by Donald Ray Pollock’s book Knockemstiff. Anhedönia has acknowledged that the end product has shifted away from this case-study-like structure, but the initial form grounds it; the project is thus a total separation from her previous album.

Anhedönia’s most recent venture is seemingly a result of her changing mindset. In a May 2022 interview with the New York Times, she expressed how she was happy to embrace celebrity and ‘play Miss Alt-Pop Star and … parade [her]self around’ for the release of her ‘first record’, with the aim to earn a legacy where she can remove herself from the mainstream. Now that Anhedönia’s first album cycle is over, her ‘parad[ing]’ seems to be over. During an interview with the Guardian, Anhedönia stated that she ‘would really love to have a much smaller fanbase’ than she did post-Preacher’s Daughter. Frustrated with her audience ‘joking’ about her work, Anhedönia expressed a desire to be able to ‘turn off the memeable internet personality thing’ where she can move away from being ‘funny’ or ‘relatable’ and, instead, have an audience based on appreciation of her art. Six months later, Anhedönia appears to be somewhat succeeding. Fans of hers have expressed confusion about the direction of her new sound on social media, with comments such as ‘ETHEL WHAT IS THIS??’ and ‘this new Ethel Cain album is just machine noises … what even is this’. 

For these fans, Perverts lacks the anthemic and catchy memories of American Teenager or Crush; the lead single Punish is a dark, brooding, nearly seven-minute piano ballad. Anhedönia’s vocals are accompanied by creaking noises, as she sings slowly, enunciating every syllable, providing the minimalist space for the repeated refrain ‘I am punished by love’ to slowly and effectively resonate with the listener. As Anhedönia lets her voice and the piano become swallowed by harsh guitar riffs and feedback, her chorus blends into itself, the melody repeated and repeated until the guitar cuts out as the song returns to sombre piano chords, accompanied by an eerie, panning drone. Despite its harshness, this is arguably the most accessible song on the album. It is followed by the thirteen-minute ambient track Housofpsychoticwomn, which pairs the repeated, artificially monotone call of ‘I love you’ with a building sample (or reconstruction) of a pregnancy scan. Behind the clear repeated vocal, Anhedönia quietly mutters a spoken-word extract about the magnitude yet un-explainability of love. Eventually this is overridden by the overbearing drone. ‘I love you’ is perverted from a plea to a threat.

Although Perverts’ dark ambience is at odds with any previous framing of Anhedönia as a pop artist and the ‘stan economy’ she found frustrating in interviews in 2023, her new style is not a complete diversion from Preacher’s Daughter. Repeated vocal melodies, brown noise and heavy guitar riffs are reminiscent of harsher moments on songs such as ‘Ptolomaea’ and ‘Family Tree’. Further, Anhedönia’s new material, like her previous work, has ample room for interpretation and analysis. The fifteen-minute Pulldrone details the ‘12 Pillars of Simulacrum’, Anhedönia’s own theory influenced by Jean Baudrillard’s Simulacra, which concerns the difficulties of dividing reality from media representation in modern society. Anhedönia’s interpretation of Simulacra is grounded in spirituality and a connection to ‘hell’ and the ‘great dark’, which Anhedönia developed in a YouTube video titled ‘the ring, the great dark, and proximity to god’ released in anticipation of the departure of Preacher’s Daughter. Proximity to God is of consistent thematic importance throughout the entire album, and there is an implicit comparison between the perversion of love and perversion of reality. Through a perversion of reality, the listener finds themselves against God. Further, the title of Pulldrone itself refers abstractedly to the pull of humanity between spirituality and the apathy of the modern age, yet also functions as recognition of the ‘drone’ accompanying the poetry. The ambience is uncomfortable and distorted; strings develop and become more grating as the song progresses, stuttering and dying out in its final moments. Anhedönia stated that this ambience alongside the base texture for the album is entirely developed from field recordings of Niagara falls. A connection to nature and thus a spiritual connection to the physical world is embedded in Perverts; this natural connection is distorted beyond recognition throughout. Not all of the ambient cuts on Perverts are deliberately abrasive, however. Thatorchia is a standout example, with developing vocal riffs which expand to an atmosphere that is eerie rather than claustrophobic. Even this, however, is uncomfortable. 

Perhaps the decision to state that Perverts is an EP (Extended Play) whatsoever is Anhedönia’s recognition of the album’s stylistic departure from Preachers Daughter. An EP is usually considered a shorter album, with the length nearly never exceeding 30 minutes. Perverts is longer than Anhedönia’s debut album. The decision could reflect some acknowledgement that this is a side-project or not the direction of her future sound. In a Tumblr post, Anhedönia brushed off the question ‘is it true you’re trying to push away from the more mainstream sound to draw in a closer and intimate audience?’ by saying that she ‘just really like[s] drone music and wanted to make some’. Despite this, it is surely naïve to suggest that Anhedönia did not believe that her newest release would ostracise some fans – a reduction of her fanbase she has previously been all in favour for. 

I am not intending to argue that Anhedönia’s newest release is a deliberate attempt to ‘weed out’ fans who discovered her music through TikTok or other social media. But she is encouraging her audience to judge her music critically and engage with it, instead of rejecting it upon first listen. Anhedönia regularly posts and thanks critics for reviews of her music even when not entirely positive: when the listener properly considers the merits of her music, the feedback is appreciated. Ambient and drone are not genres which resonate with everybody; through the release of a challenging, incredibly detailed drone record, Anhedönia encourages her audience to properly judge the music they hear. 

Perverts is for every-body.