Perverts

There was a moment when Hayden Anhedönia was poised to break big. Preacher's Daughter, her sprawling 2022 debut full-length as alter ego Ethel Cain, made waves with both critics and fans, many of whom would attend her concerts dressed just like her. On the cusp of mainstream indie fame, her next record would push her over the edge.But Perverts is not that record. If anything, it feels specifically designed to blow up that narrative. An EP in name only, its nine tracks clock in at more than 80 minutes. It also abandons tight songcraft and soaring melodies for extended drone sequences, doomy folk dirges and lyrics spoken in a hushed whisper.Where Preacher's Daughter was warm and wide open, this is cold and claustrophobic. "Vacillator" is the most traditional song, based around brushed drums, guitar and melody. But even it runs for more than seven minutes. There are moments of catharsis, like the post-rock-ish outro to "Thatorchia," or the American Football-esque "Amber Waves," but Perverts is far from the southern gothic Lana Del Rey aesthetic that brought the Ethel Cain project to the masses; Perverts sounds more like a lost Mount Eerie record from the late 2000s.Of course, Anhedönia has been teasing a record like this for a while. Making clear that her artistic ambitions would not be hemmed in by expectations, Anhedönia is finding new avenues to explore the Ethel Cain character.Though not explicitly personal — the stories she tells are about everything from pedophiles to 18th-century French architects — it's easy to map Anhedönia's own story onto many of these songs. Born into a Southern Baptist family, being a trans woman has put her at odds with her upbringing. Like the collection of characters she sings about, she too is perverting or deviating from expected norms, both in her personal and, as seen here, professional life.Anhedönia is already looking beyond Peverts. Part of a larger multi-generational narrative, she's conceptualized the next album, though who knows what shape it will eventually take. Taken on its own, in an era where most artists make albums a third of its length, the EP feels like a daunting endurance test. But the deeper you dig into Perverts and Ethel Cain's world, the more rewarding the experience.