Kingsley Hall (voice) and Robbie Major (synths and noise) are Benefits, and they exist within a lineage of quintessential English spoken-word post-punk poetry that may not translate all that well to those living outside this septic isle. Their work sits alongside acts such as Sleaford Mods, Soft Play, and Kae Tempest while also being better than any of them.
On Constant Noise, their second album, there’s a move into new sonic terrain with four-to-the-floor dance beats that more than tip a nod of acknowledgement to A Hundred Days Off-era Underworld. Where debut album Nails was a glorious racket of pent up frustration and abrasive noise, here Hall and Major are much more refined, restrained even, and oxymoronically uplifting in light of the songs’ subject matter. Anger is an energy, but it needs to be euphoric, collective, and righteous if it is to have value beyond the moment. Constant Noise is all of these things.
In his book Noise: The Political Economy of Music, French economic and social theorist (we’re onto the high brow stuff here, folks!) Jacques Attali identifies noise as the disruptive element that challenges established social orders. He argued that noise represents the potential for change and disruption, a force that exists outside of structured, regulated music and its aim to stupify the masses with banality and masterminded mediocrity. Noise is a disruptive force. A beautiful, rapturous siren of change.
On the other hand, noise is a disturbance, the aural effluence of inconsequence and superficiality in a world that lacks the imagination to shift the narrative away from sociopathic billionaire greed, growth on a finite planet, and the subsequent and inevitable global destruction that comes with it. The ouroboros simulating nature of the central neo-liberalist fantasy of trickle-down wealth generation can no longer be ignored. We’re all victims of late-stage capitalism and there’s just chatter around us as a deliberate act of distraction.
“What will I be required to hate today?” opines Hall on the opening “Constant Noise”, his delicate Teesside accent accompanied by a soporific choir and delicate electronics. This isn’t the unrelenting rage of their earlier work, this is something a little more cognitive, a little more insightful, yet it’s as equally on point. The focus here is on the narrative constructed by others to keep us in line – divide and conquer as the easiest route to maintaining the beautiful hegemony enjoyed by so few. This is cinematic. The onanist, flag-burning imagery of Derek Jarman’s masterpiece The Last of England comes to mind.
“Land of the Tyrants” has an undulating, almost woozy feel to it as the electronic pulses shimmer and shake, an incessant rhythm not far off The Chemical Brothers’ “Star Guitar” is the spine here as Hall berates the political classes and the apathy within the nation. It’s one of those complicated tracks where the messaging feels too important to be lost to the dance floor, whilst acknowledging that few genres – particularly in Britain – have been more political (and politicised) than dance music in the last 35 years. The vocal refrain of “Hail to the thief” obviously brings to mind Radiohead, and the track itself has a real Kid A feel to it, yet it’s unlikely that Benefits will ever be caught in a furore after deciding to play in Israel while ignorantly rebutting any questions or accusations about it. Time will tell, I suppose.
“Lies and Fear” leans on the sounds of Nails, and while sonically it’s something of an outlier on this record, its position in the tracklisting increases its sense of alarm and feral urgency. This could be the start of a shift in the record, and somehow having a track that sticks out like a sore thumb so early just works when, really, it shouldn’t.
The emotional centrepiece of the record is “Missiles”. It’s a tune about humanity’s general docility and silent compliance about Gaza and the genocidal atrocities played out on the world’s television screens, in our newspaper headlines, and social media feeds. Hall’s restrained voice – hushed at times – is a morbid hybrid of resignation and acceptance. There’s a thin line here between self-reflection and self-congratulation, and the homogenising of the responses of the nameless characters in the song is closer to the truth than we might like to comfortably admit. “There’s no need for humanitarian corridors here / And the man says the missiles are firing again.” Robbie Major really comes to the fore on this track, the last act of the song spiralling into ever more desperate soundscapes. It’s somewhere between Nine Inch Nails and Luke Abbott, and it’s glorious.
Elsewhere, “Blame” feels like a Leftfield jam, while the shuffled beats and Middlesborough rapper Shakk’s frenetic delivery on “Divide” inject a new sense of energy and hope in the later stages of the album. There’s a tension in the vocal interplay between Hall and Shakk, but there’s also a camaraderie which is at the essence of the record. None of us are free until we all are – there’s power in (a) union.
There’s a lot going on here, and Benefits have refused to stand still in the face of increasing media attention. Whether this works in their favour with their core audience remains to be seen, but there’s a boldness – and contrarian flippancy – that should be applauded. That’s not to say that there aren’t some issues with some of the 14 tracks on Constant Noise. The Tindersticks aping closer, “Burnt Out Family Home” is not a bad track by any measure, but the narrative focus centres on the micro on this track whereas we’ve been dealing with macro issues for so long up until this point that the shift feels jarring. It would have been a completely killer B-side, to be fair.
When Constant Noise triumphs, it absolutely soars. There is a degree of hope in the acknowledgement and awareness of the state that we’re in, and the dark euphoria that Benefits produce might not save us, but there would be far worse soundtracks to accompany our collective, manic dance into oblivion. Sleep well, all.
