by Riley Zawilenski
You don’t have to know me extremely well at all to know that I’m quite the Ethel Cain fanatic. I make it clear every chance I get, whether it’s through my Ethel-related TikTok reposts, explaining her albums’ lore to my friends, and even talking about her on air from time to time. I’ll even be seeing her live at her Milwaukee concert very soon, so this definitely will not be the last time you hear from me about her. I may have only come across her music a couple years ago, but she quickly became one of the musicians whose artistry and gift for storytelling I adore the most. She was my top artist of 2025, and although it’s still early to tell, I already anticipate her being my top artist a second year in a row.
Spanning multiple genres, Ethel has proven herself as a versatile artist, but lately, her more recent releases have gravitated towards the ambient genre. Initially, I wasn’t very familiar with it. However, I was willing to give it a try since she’s one of my favorite artists; I’ll listen to anything she releases, no matter what it may be. Over time, thanks to her, I’ve started to enjoy ambient music much more with her experimental album Perverts.
Released in January of 2025, Perverts explores drone, ambient, slowcore, and even noise music elements to create a haunting atmosphere for 90 minutes. It’s extremely different from Ethel’s earlier sound, which most often fluctuated between indie pop and indie rock. I’ll admit, at first I was a bit unsettled by the album’s eeriness. It took some time for it to grow on me, but the album’s relaxing and more melodic moments really made me appreciate the darker, experimental sound she was aiming for. Tracks like “Amber Waves” and “Etienne” (one of my favorites across her whole discography) are some of the prettiest that I’ve heard in a while, and I’d love to find more songs similar to them.
Even after the release of Perverts, Ethel embraces these elements in her other recent work. Her newest album, Willoughby Tucker, I’ll Always Love You, has a slowcore moment on the ten-minute track “Tempest,” while the album’s three instrumental tracks “Willoughby’s Theme,” “Willoughby’s Interlude,” and “Radio Towers” also fall under the ambient umbrella. Between the three, “Radio Towers” is definitely my favorite; I love its inspiration from horror video game “safe room” music. Meanwhile, “Willoughby’s Theme” is a close contender with its ethereal piano and gradual build-up as the song progresses.
Before discovering Ethel Cain, I’d never listened to ambient music or was very fond of instrumentals in general, but her artistry has made me willing to expand my music taste beyond what I normally listen to. Recently, I’ve been scouring online for other artists with sounds similar to that of Perverts and ambient music in general. I even downloaded SoundCloud a few months ago so I could listen to more of Ethel’s unreleased work (including her ambient side project Ashmedai, stylized in Hebrew as אשמדאי), and in the process, I’ve come across tracks from smaller, aspiring ambient artists that deserve more attention and I’d definitely like to continue exploring the genre.
