Ethel Cain returns with the sinister new single “Punish”
Photo by Silken Weinberg.
Ethel Cain, the monarch of Southern gothic iconography and brooding alt-rock, has returned at long last with “Punish,” the first sampling from her upcoming sophomore LP Perverts, due this upcoming January. “Punish” follows in the footsteps of the singer’s past work, reveling in echoing, nightmarish malaise, and culminates in a near seven minute slow burn of dread and, well, punishment.
In the two years since Cain released her stellar debut album, 2022’s Preacher’s Daughter, the singer-songwriter has remained generally quiet — aside from a few collaborations, including “Famous Last Words (An Ode to Eaters)” with 1017 ALYX 9SM, a cover of American Football’s “For Sure” and a host of vlogs, book tours and paranormal stories posted to YouTube. Though the singer has been releasing music for the last five years, Preacher’s Daughter, and songs such as “American Teenager” and “Sun Bleached Flies,” cemented her as an artist with a sharp eye (and ear) for infusing her work with religious aestheticism with her razor-tongued lyricism.
“Punish” doesn’t reinvent the wheel that songwriter Hayden Anhedönia built with the Ethel Cain moniker, but it does promise that the sound crafted on Preacher’s Daughter will live to see another stormy day. Solemn piano notes inflected with the slightest bit of warble open the song, backed by a soft, distorted creak that sounds eerily reminiscent of a farm’s windmill in need of some WD-40. Cain delivers her words as though she sings through a muffled recording device, further curating the ominous soundscape of the track.
“Shame is sharp, and my skin gives so easy / Only God knows, only God would believe / That I was an angel, but they made me leave,” she sings as the song nears its halfway point. The ring of reverb-soaked electric guitar kicks in, adding a sinister pulse that carries throughout the rest of the song. Cain’s words illustrate self-inflicted pain caused by guilt (“In the morning I will mar myself again”) and her melancholic resolve (“I am punished by love”). If “Punish” is any indication of what’s to come in January with the arrival of Perverts, light the candles and ready your crucifixes.
