Amber Waves

Teased via an Instagram story on April 20, 2024, and teased extended the next day on Instagram alongside a three-minute snippet/video edit of the 1990 ‘cult classic’ movie “The Reflecting Skin”, “Amber Waves” is the ninth and final track on Ethel Cain's fourth EP, ’Perverts’.

Although the narrative in which the EP has been following comes to a close, with the individual finding the so-called ‘divine theatre’. Heartbreakingly, the individual becomes fixated on the euphoria given by the theatre, craving it so much that they resort to the cycle of addiction to find it once more.

On May 31st, 2024, during her set at Primavera Sound, Barcelona, Ethel announced that ’Amber Waves’ is from her upcoming project, confirming on Tumblr that it is not on the Preacher’s Daughter b-sides.

Much like the film that conjoined the first snippet of the song, the ‘Amber Waves’ are in reference to the waves of grain as noted by Katherine Lee Bates in her 1895 anthem ”America the Beautiful”, grain in which litters the scenery of the film. The song takes inspiration in tone to the mystical, and macabre, narrative of said movie, as Ethel’s wistful voice passes through the plunging plucks of the guitar to create a sonic cry of sorts, intertwined in the instrument, alike to how the main character of the movie, Seth Dove, cries in agony at the end of the movie.