Ethel Cain Perverts

Critic's Take

Ethel Cain's Perverts refuses the tidy coronation many expected, trading in soaring songcraft for extended drone and doomy folk - the best tracks, like “Vacillator” and “Amber Waves”, show how that restraint can pay off. Ian Gormely frames “Vacillator” as the record's most traditional song, its brushed drums and melody carrying a rare accessibility amid claustrophobic textures. He also highlights the catharsis of “Thatorchia” and the American Football-esque sweep of “Amber Waves”, arguing the deeper you dig the more rewarding these pieces become. The result is an 80-minute endurance test that still yields moments of real payoff for listeners willing to follow her away from expectation.

Key Points

• The best song, "Vacillator", is the record's most traditional and accessible moment amid long-form drones.
• The album's core strengths are its atmospheric, claustrophobic textures and rewarding cathartic moments for patient listeners.

Themes

Critic's Take

In a slow, unsettling pivot from her debut, Ethel Cain uses Perverts to bury listeners in ambience and drones, making songs like “Punish” and “Amber Waves” stand out as the album's clearest rewards. The reviewer lingers on “Punish” for its Billie Eilish undertone and majestic guitar climax, and prizes “Amber Waves” as the most rewarding, a distant, ailing vocal and electric guitar moment that finally reveals Anhedönia's singer-songwriter promise. This is a daring, gloomy record that reads like a masterclass in horror scoring, so best tracks on Perverts are the ones that cut through the fog - chiefly “Amber Waves” and “Punish”.

Key Points

• The best song, "Amber Waves", rewards patience with distant, ailing vocals and electric guitar that reveal Anhedönia's singer-songwriter strengths.
• The album's core strengths are its haunting ambience, bold experimentation, and its unnerving Southern gothic storytelling.

Themes

Critic's Take

Ethel Cain's Perverts most harrowing and magnetic moments are led by “Punish”, “Vacillator” and “Amber Waves” - tracks that bind erotic collapse to ritualistic sound. The reviewer's prose lingers on the grotesque tenderness of “Punish” and the minimalist, sensual ache of “Vacillator”, naming them the album's emotional fulcrums. Written like a film critique turned exorcism, the voice insists these best tracks make Perverts feel like a snuff film - achingly beautiful, uncompromisingly hardcore.

Key Points

• The best song, "Punish", is best because its harrowing lyricism and gothic atmosphere reach a level of harrowing excellence.
• The album's core strengths are its ritualistic sound design, evocative religious imagery, and erotic-horror thematic cohesion.

Themes

Critic's Take

Ethel Cain's Perverts feels like a dare and a descent, where abrasive experiments punctuate brief, human moments. I find the creeping single “Punish” and the cooler guitar of “Etienne” to be the clearest rewards amid the noise. Tracks like “Pulldrone” and “Housofpsychoticwomn” push mercilessly into installation-grade territory, but that dissonance is also the record's point. By the time “Amber Waves” closes, sunlight and plants briefly return, making it another essential moment.

Key Points

• “Punish” is the best track because it provides a creeping, coherent anchor amid the EP's experimental noise.
• The album's core strengths are its uncompromising experimentalism and evocative horror-tinged atmosphere.

Themes

Critic's Take

In a voice that tightens like a held breath, Ethel Cain’s Perverts crowns several moments as its clearest beacons: “Perverts” opens the record with a terrifying 12-minute plunge, while “Onanist”, “Punish”, and “Amber Waves” reveal Cain’s best vocal work, multi-tracked and raw. Sasha Geffen writes with clipped, evocative register - the album is claustrophobic, haunted, and occasionally breathtaking - so when you search for the best songs on Perverts, start with those named tracks for the record’s strongest emotional payoff. The record’s tension between eerie ambient collages and slow, structured songs gives these tracks their power, making them the best tracks on Perverts because they balance horror and intimacy.

Key Points

• The title track is best for its terrifying, immersive 12-minute opening that establishes the album’s claustrophobic horror.
• The album’s core strengths are its claustrophobic ambiance and intimate, multi-tracked vocal performances confronting shame and guilt.

Themes

Critic's Take

Ethel Cain's Perverts is less a conventional follow-up and more a daring plunge into ambient extremes, which means the best songs on Perverts are those that still anchor the record - notably “Punish” and “Housofpsychoticwomn”. Lisa Wright writes with a dry, observant authority, noting how “Punish” offers a melancholy through line back to Preacher’s Daughter while “Housofpsychoticwomn” submerges the listener in a 13-minute industrial solitude. This is an album where Cain's world-building is the chief virtue, so the best tracks are the ones that either tether that world to song - like “Punish” - or push its outskirts to the limit, as “Housofpsychoticwomn” does.

Key Points

• The best song is a tie between “Punish” for its melancholic through line and “Housofpsychoticwomn” for its immersive 13-minute submersion.
• The album's core strength is uncompromising world-building through ambient, experimental soundscapes that prioritize atmosphere over algorithmic appeal.

Themes

Critic's Take

Ethel Cain's Perverts is presented as an almost unbearable, 90-minute exercise in atmosphere where the best songs - notably “Perverts” and “Amber Waves” - deliver the album's fiercest impact. Abbott's sentences linger on the record's spare vocal moments and colossal synth-driven instrumentals, arguing that tracks like “Perverts” and “Amber Waves” are the emotional apexes of the work. The review's voice insists this is no collection of radio hooks but a deliberate, punishing sequence that rewards close listening with devastating payoffs. In that register, the best songs on Perverts emerge as scenes of grief and revelation, where collaborators like Angel Diaz and Madeline Johnston amplify Cain's peerless tone.

Key Points

• Album closer “Amber Waves” is the emotional apex due to its length, collaborators, and 'crippling beauty'.
• Perverts' core strengths are its atmosphere, spare powerful vocals, bold production choices, and fearless collaboration.

Themes

Critic's Take

In a patient, often unsettling hour and a half, Ethel Cain pushes texture and mood above melody on Perverts, making the best tracks the ones that let atmosphere do the speaking - “Perverts” and “Pulldrone” stand out for their immersive drone and haunted lyric fragments, while “Punish” and “Amber Waves” supply the clearest rewards. Garland’s review lingers on the record’s slow accrual of menace and tenderness, valuing the handful of songs that fold melody into vast stretches of silence. For listeners asking which are the best songs on Perverts, the review points repeatedly to the opener and the sustained centrepieces as the album’s most affecting moments.

Key Points

• The opener “Perverts” is best for setting tone with its hymn, underwater voice and immersive drone.
• The album’s core strengths are its mood, texture, and Southern Gothic themes that turn shame and desire into atmosphere.

Themes

Critic's Take

Ethel Cain makes an audacious pivot on Perverts, where the best tracks - notably “Punish” and the title track “Perverts” - pull you into a claustrophobic, haunted world. Brownese sentences slow down to linger on the album's textures, praising “Punish” as a piano ballad of desire and shame and admiring the title track's icy menace when it sings the hymn. The review dwells on the uneasy beauty of moments scattered amid drone and crackle, presenting these songs as distressingly exquisite and likely the best tracks on Perverts. It reads like a warning and an invitation at once, explaining why listeners will be bound to certain songs even as the album pushes away others.

Key Points

• “Punish” is the best song for its elegiac piano balladry and evocative lyrics that lure the listener into the album’s world.
• The album’s core strength is its meticulous, claustrophobic sound design that combines drone, distortion and moments of aching beauty.

Themes

Critic's Take

There are two ways to approach Perverts, but what makes the best songs - notably “Punish” and “Amber Waves” - so gripping is Cain’s heady, mesmerizing storytelling and sonic audacity. Clare Martin’s ear catches the way “Punish” swells from lo-fi piano into a chest-reverberating wall of sound, and how “Amber Waves” becomes the EP’s lullaby-strewn, aching closer. The record’s dwell in drone, noise and ritualistic imagery means the best tracks are those that balance accessibility with unsettling textures. If you want the best songs on Perverts, start with “Punish” for its emotional heft and “Amber Waves” for its haunting tenderness.

Key Points

• “Punish” is best because it combines emotional narrative, striking imagery and a climactic wall-of-sound payoff.
• The album’s core strengths are Cain’s storytelling, use of drone/noise textures, and unsettling religious-sexual imagery.

Themes

Critic's Take

In his gauzy, evaluative tone Ben Tipple frames Ethel Cain's Perverts as a deliberately unsettling project, singling out “Punish” and “Pulldrone” as the record's essential moments. He praises “Punish” for being relatively accessible amid the album's doom-laden soundscapes, and presents “Pulldrone” as an audacious, nightmarish centerpiece that foregoes melody. Tipple also highlights the sparse reprieve offered by “Vacillator”, “Etienne” and closing “Amber Waves”, arguing these moments crystallize why listeners seeking the best tracks on Perverts should brace for its darker rewards. The reviewer's voice remains measured but admiring, suggesting the best songs reward immersion rather than instant hooks.

Key Points

• The best song is the audacious “Pulldrone” because its nightmarish 15-minute scope serves as the album's emotional centerpiece.
• The album's core strengths are its cinematic worldbuilding, experimental drones, and moments of sparse vocal respite that puncture the doom.

Critic's Take

In a voice that is equal parts ominous and tender, Ethel Cain turns Perverts into a bleak, immersive landscape where the best tracks - notably “Perverts” and “Punish” - set the tone. The 12-minute title track acts as a forbidding gateway, a barrage of ambient nothingness that warns you of the journey ahead, while “Punish” crystallises the record's core with hollow chords and spine-tingling vocal crescendos. If listeners seek the best songs on Perverts, these two cuts stand out as the record's emotional and atmospheric centres, even as the album remains challenging throughout.

Key Points

• The title track is the album's best song because its 12-minute ambient opening establishes the record's forbidding atmosphere.
• Perverts' core strengths are its immersive gothic atmosphere and Hayden's spine-tingling vocal crescendos that crystallise emotional despair.

Themes

Critic's Take

Ethel Cain's Perverts feels like an audacious left turn, and the best songs - notably “Perverts” and “Punish” - are the ones that revel in dread and atmosphere. The opening “Perverts” is a 12-minute gauntlet that warns you what to expect, a slow-burn centerpiece that sinks its teeth in. “Punish” is the project's eerie, solitary single, Hayden's voice unmasked over four hollow chords, its crescendo the record's most spine-tingling moment. Even when the record drifts into ambient nothingness, those tracks anchor its terrifying, enveloping mood.

Key Points

• The opening title-track is the best song because its 12-minute span frames the album's terrifying atmosphere.
• The album's core strengths are its enveloping dread, atmospheric production, and Hayden's spine-tingling vocals.

Themes

Critic's Take

In a voice that never softens, Ethel Cain’s Perverts stakes its claim with bruising meditations on love and audience. The review continually elevates “Vacillator” as the album’s crown jewel, praising its percussion, swelling harmonies, and unforgettable slowcore stew. It also singles out “Punish” and “Amber Waves” as the clearest links to Cain’s traditional strengths, while acknowledging how tracks like “Perverts”, “Housofpsychoticwomn”, and “Pulldrone” will polarize listeners. Read together, the best songs on Perverts are those that balance Cain’s intimate vocal power with moments of melody and clarity - especially “Vacillator”, “Punish”, and “Amber Waves”.

Key Points

• Vacillator is the album's standout for combining percussion, layered melody, and ethereal harmonies into Cain's crown jewel.
• Perverts' core strengths are its thematic bravery, exploration of disordered love, and willingness to alienate for artistic clarity.

Themes

Critic's Take

Ethel Cain's Perverts is unapologetically harrowing, and the review makes it clear the best tracks are those that commit fully to that terror - “Perverts”, “Pulldrone” and “Housofpsychoticwomn” emerge as the album's high points. Vicky Greer writes in a measured, authoritative tone, noting how the 12-minute “Perverts” opens with a haunting hymn and how “Pulldrone” is a freezing, spoken-word descent into madness. The review repeatedly returns to the album's relentless atmosphere and spectral vocals as the rationale for why these tracks stand out, while slightly more accessible moments like “Vacillator” and “Amber Waves” are described as dampened but notable. The narrative overall frames the best songs as those that intensify the darkness of her debut rather than extend its lore.

Key Points

• The best song is the title track “Perverts” because its 12-minute opening hymn and noise establish the album's terrifying, singular atmosphere.
• The album's core strengths are its relentless industrial soundscapes, spectral vocals and commitment to unsettling, immersive horror.

Themes

Critic's Take

Ethel Cain’s Perverts feels like the quiet part of a horror film, and the best tracks - “Vacillator” and “Amber Waves” - are where that tension turns into beauty. Lucy Harbron’s voice stays unflinching: she treats these pieces as immersive stations of dread, praising “Vacillator” as “stunning and seductive” and calling “Amber Waves” an 11-minute opus that comes as naturally as breathing. The songs she singles out as highlights reward patient listening rather than singalong hooks, which is exactly the point of why some fans will hate this project and others will find it staggering. Read as a whole, Perverts is less a collection of hits and more a deliberate, singular vision that makes “Vacillator” and “Amber Waves” the standout tracks.

Key Points

• Vacillator stands out for its seductive, velvety richness that still preserves the album's haunting tone.
• The album’s core strength is its immersive horror-tinged atmosphere and bold, uncompromising artistic vision.

Themes

Critic's Take

Ethel Cain's Perverts is an eighty-minute meditation that rewards patience, and the best songs on Perverts are the ones that finally crack open the record's claustrophobic world - “Etienne” and “Amber Waves”. Matthew Kim writes in a restrained, almost academic cadence, praising how “Etienne” and “Thatchoria” swell into terrifyingly radiant beauty while “Amber Waves” closes with mournful clarity. In that voice he argues the album's power comes from repetition and negative space, making tracks like “Pulldrone” punishing but purposeful, and rewarding listeners who give Perverts full attention.

Key Points

• “Etienne” is the best song because its swelling instrumentals and concluding speech achieve the album’s transcendence.
• The album’s core strength is its use of repetition, negative space and atmosphere to translate spiritual experience.

Themes

Critic's Take

Ethel Cain's Perverts is less catharsis than excavation, and the best tracks - notably “Perverts” and “Punish” - are where that excavation is most extreme. The title track sets the tone with a distorted hymn and a 12-minute drone that makes discomfort feel like architecture, while “Punish” confronts moral ambiguity head-on, delivered without distance or judgement. Elsewhere, “Pulldrone” and “Thatorchia” trade warmth for brutalist overwhelm, so the best songs on Perverts are the ones that force you to stay with the dread rather than run from it.

Key Points

• The title track is best because its distorted hymn and prolonged drone define the album’s brutalist atmosphere.
• The album’s core strengths are its commitment to discomfort, dense sonic textures, and moral ambiguity in storytelling.

Themes

Critic's Take

Ethel Cain fashions Perverts as a hallucinatory, nightmarish world where the best songs - notably “Housofpsychoticwomn”, “Vacillator” and “Etienne” - act as set pieces of dread and tenderness. Jack Faulds writes with uncanny detail, likening “Housofpsychoticwomn” to a foreboding grandfather clock and a cattle-collecting tornado, and praises how “Vacillator” walks the line between tenderness and lechery. The review frames these tracks as central to why the album succeeds at turning Ethel Cain into a character and a world rather than a mere popstar. That framing underpins recommendations for the best tracks on Perverts without diluting the record's unsettling atmosphere.

Key Points

• Housofpsychoticwomn is the album's emotional and atmospheric centerpiece, packed with vivid, horrifying imagery.
• Perverts' core strength is its intense worldbuilding and consistent horror-inflected sonic palette that frames Ethel Cain as a character.

Themes

Critic's Take

Ethel Cain’s Perverts finds its best tracks in the ways they transmute devotion into dread, particularly “Perverts” and “Punish”. The title track’s contorted voices and muffled hymn establish the EP’s tone, while “Punish” pairs the line "I am punished by love" with blown-out guitar to devastating effect. Elsewhere, “Onanist” offers the rare lift, Cain’s voice climbing toward a fragile fulfillment amid the drones. Taken together, these best songs show how Cain recasts love as an affliction and makes that perversion hauntingly beautiful.

Key Points

• The best song is the title track because its muffled hymn and drones establish the EP’s unsettling atmosphere.
• The album’s core strength is transmuting themes of religiosity and abuse into abrasive, cathartic soundscapes.

Themes