BENEFITS: The Joiners, Southampton – Live review

Live Review

BENEFITS
The Joiners, Southampton   

22/10/24

After years of writing about their recorded output and online exchanges with Kingsley Hall, Ged Babey finally gets to see the all-new BENEFITS live experience. 

I’ll start at the end.

The encore, ‘bringing you the hits’ is an extended, pummeling. industrial techno maelstromic version of Traitors and it is phenomenal. Best piece of live music I’ve heard for years in terms of noise and rage and beats that literally seem to speed up your heartbeat. It’s transcen-fuckin-dental. Metal Machine Music style oscillating feedback re-tooled for angry ravers.

BENEFITS 2024 are a two-man team. Kingsley on mainly vocals (he twiddles knobs and hits a pad with a drumstick every now and then) and Robbie, instrumentation – keys, drum machines, violin, a battery of effects pedals.  It’s ‘stripped down’ as they say but it’s still powerful and thrilling as a live prospect.  The two face each other across the banks of keyboards and are lit from behind, no spotlight on the vocalist.

His wiry frame is only really seen in silhouette as he shadow-boxes Rollins-style on the more energetic raging songs… but at first this does seem to be a quieter, more thoughtful Benefits as they start with Constant Noise (which is the opposite to what it says on the tin)) and then Land of The Tyrants, the latest single. BENEFITS are evolving, from rant-and-noise to think-and-dance maybe.

Minimal banter, maximum concentration on the music.  The keyboard sounds are dominated by a monstrous bass-boom that cuts through and vibrates the air and the floor.  Importantly, to me, it seems louder than the beats and somehow at a pitch where the vocals are still clear and audible.  There is an undeniable Underworld ‘Born Slippy’ vibe at times but the huge, growling yet somehow jagged-sounding bass makes the feel more dramatic and cinematic.

One of the new songs, Dancing On The Tables with its repeated lines about ‘being what you are allowed to be’ is an epic, words and music.

Robbie alternates between keyboards and a violin, not that is sounds like one: more the sound of heavy earth-moving machinery or a metal-on-metal scraping noise.  John Cale must’ve sounded like that in the Velvets early days.  The electronic pulse of another song makes me think of Vega & Rev’s Suicide.  But these thoughts of the past must be banished as BENEFITS are the here, the now and the future.  They are important, exceptional and yes, it translates and is impressive live.

This is the thing with BENEFITS:  The words are part poetry, part spoken word/prose –  and there are some elements of actual singing there in the new material.  The Music is almost cinema music/film score and not quite dance music or hip-hop.  They just don’t fit into a convenient pigeonhole.  The set, a full 15 songs is expansive and slowly builds and is almost like a classical piece or play, weird as that may sound.

When they became a ‘touring rock band’ with a succession of drummers it took on a different aspect to the starkness and sharp focus of their videos, which I always saw as their best format. Now as a duo they are back to their original core values.  BENEFITS live is an experience – one that is outside of rock’n’roll, pop music, indie or dance music. The music would be ‘uncompromising and experimental’ for it’s own sake, if it was just that (instrumental).  But with Halls brilliant prose/poetry/words it is given a purpose and real meaning.

It’s art. Communication and resistance. That will fill you with joy, in the knowledge that you are not alone.

Remaining Tour Dates
23 Oct – Brighton
24 Oct – Margate
25 Oct – London
26 Oct – Newport

BENEFITS website 

All words Ged Babey