Benefits - Missiles
An end-of-year salvo hits a new mark for one of the region's most essential bands
There was an early Christmas present for Benefits fans with the unveiling of the band’s latest video clip early on Dec. 24. If you’ve been paying attention, you’ll guess that this wasn’t a Bing Crosby cover.
Instead, “Missiles” takes the laughter, cheers and applause of the festive season and deftly undermines it. Juxtaposing the comfortable complacency of the haves with the increasingly desperate straits of the have nots – those titular missiles raining down on other people, while we shrug, scroll and carry on the party – it’s another lyrical swipe at the failings of the modern world. Merry Christmas, war isn’t over.
Just another cry of rage, then? Well, no. In common with Benefits’ material for next year’s eagerly awaited album “Constant Noise” there’s a reinvention here. In place of fiery rage there’s an icy ambience: a chilling combination of apathy and contempt, “the price we pay for our Western ease; Comfortably numbed, fed, watered and pleased.” In the hands of producer James Adrian Brown, a renowned electronic artist previously with Torn Apart by Horses, there’s an otherworldly feeling to the music; electronica rising from a BBC radiophonic workshop to drizzle a kosmische haze over proceedings. You could imagine the music accompanying a slice of experimental Soviet sci-fi, while the text dulls the senses via social media, early nights for work in the morning and the ever-present undertow of the football. Daily bread and motheaten circuses weave new social threads.
Benefits frontman Kingsley Hall wanted to refocus the band’s trademark anger.
“There’s no shouting or obvious sloganeering here, yet it’s still seething with fury,” he said. “Lyrically it’s an attempt to look at our own comfortable mundane western lives and question why the terror and horror of others can fade so far into the background that it barely registers when it’s mentioned on the news or pops up on your phone. The soundscapes that Robbie and James created for the track match the tension in the lyric, slowly building the intensity to an uncomfortable finale.”
The effect is powerful. In different hands, you could imagine the ‘We laugh, we cheer, we applaud ourselves” refrain turning into a stadium singalong, everything counting in large amounts. When Missiles debuted on Benefits’ autumn tour, the effect was the opposite: more alienating than communal, Kingsley veering towards the kind of unsettling ambiguity you might spot in the EmSee from “Cabaret” (and who would have imagined we could plausibly evoke Liza Minelli’s unwitting waltz with the Third Reich while discussing shouty, issues-based Teessiders?).
The cabaret (perhaps now with a small ‘c’) vibe bleeds into Teesside filmmaker John Kirkbride’s video as well. An empty stage, an empty auditorium. Stark monochrome.
Kingsley again: “We decided to try and mirror the glacial slowness of the song in the film. There needed to be a certain level of intensity so we went back a little to the aesthetic of some of the earliest Benefits videos where next to nothing would really happen – just a lone figure in front of a static camera. In doing so, the smallest gestures become important. I essentially play a fool - performing to no one, applauding myself, patting myself on the back by doing the bare minimum - emphasising the core themes of ignorance and pomposity at the heart of the song itself.”
Missiles is the third video to come from the upcoming “Constant Noise”, following Land of the Tyrants and Relentless. The album comes out on March 21 via Invada Records and there’s a tour to follow, culminating in a northeast show at the Glasshouse, Gateshead on May 2. Dates and tickets are available here.