Every week, Consequence’s Songs of the Week roundup spotlights high quality new tracks from the final seven days and analyzes notable releases. Discover our new favorites and extra on our Top Songs playlist, and for different nice songs from rising artists, try our New Sounds playlist. This week, Ethel Cain goes darkish and delightful on “Vacillator,” a music from her difficult new mission Perverts.
For the previous two and a half years, Ethel Cain — the recording mission of songwriter Hayden Anhedönia — has been the queen of gothic-leaning indie pop. It’s not laborious to see why: The songs that helped her debut album, Preacher’s Daughter, grow to be such a breakout success (“American Teenager,” “Strangers,” and so forth.) straddled the road between baroque pop and depressive indie rock, between Lana Del Rey’s “Mariners Condominium Complicated” and Phoebe Bridgers’ “I Know the Finish.” Smash-cut to just some days in the past, although, when the artist dropped her highly-anticipated follow-up Perverts, and Cain sounds extra like she ought to be enjoying a slot between Midwife and The Physique at this yr’s Roadburn Competition.
How’d we get right here? A sure subset of followers will surely prefer to know: “Stayed up until 12 simply to listen to 13-minute lengthy love songs full of nothing however NOISE and barely any lyrics,” one viral reaction read. “I’m past SICK and pissed??? The place are my heartfelt and relatable but traumatic lyrics at???” For many artists, such viscerally repulsed responses would sign an unambiguous failure. But, for Cain, it’s merely Perverts working precisely as designed.
Positive, it will have been straightforward for Cain to lean into the pop sensibilities that resulted in songs from Preacher’s Daughter soundtracking a number of totally different TikTok tendencies, however Cain’s relationship together with her artwork and fame is much extra sophisticated. And, actually, we should always have all seen this coming.
I imply, have you ever seen the duvet artwork for Perverts? The factor rattling close to appears like a black metallic album. Much more telling was the now-deleted Tumblr post during which Cain made her emotions relating to how some followers interact together with her work abundantly clear (lamenting the present “irony epidemic” and signing off with the biting sentiment of, “I miss after I had like 20 followers… I HATE IT HERE”). Such vitality, paired together with her vocal love of slowcore and ambient music, in the end manifested in a colossally-sized, deliberately off-putting mission made up of prolonged noise experiments, full-on drone tracks, and glacially-paced outsider rock obsessive about enjoyable matters like masturbation and disgrace.
However, for as antagonistic as Perverts could come throughout — particularly when two of the primary three songs are 12-plus-minute, largely melody-less noise compositions — Cain’s curiosity in magnificence hasn’t gone anyplace; simply give “Vacillator” a spin for proof.
After the drone of “Perverts,” the tease of “Punish,” and the darkish sonic wasteland of “Houseofpsychoticwomn,” as soon as the listener arrives at “Vacillator,” they’re formally within the eye of the storm. For a short second (and, sure, within the context of this report seven minutes is transient), the abrasion of the earlier three tracks melts away to disclose a ghostly, slow-moving, stunningly-sung melody.
The monitor aligns itself with the work of artists like Grouper, leaning on area, relative simplicity, and timbre to make its mark. However make its mark it does, as even with the worrisome lyrics, “Vacillator” is a deeply affecting composition that feels each eerie and unusually comforting, particularly inside the context of the tracklist. It’s virtually like a small reward of (admittedly barely corrupted) magnificence for these prepared to comply with Cain into her inventive hurricane.
It’s tempting to name “Vacillator” the dessert that comes after the greens of the start of the report, however perverts like us suppose the greens style simply as scrumptious. So, we’ll name “Vacillator” what it’s: a polarizing, great inventive triumph.
— Jonah Krueger
Editorial Coordinator
