BENEFITS - Constant Noise (2025)

24 Jul, 2025

A raw, unvarnished portrait of contemporary existence, where the mundane and the monstrous are heaped together in a relentless, ever-growing mountain. Life is depicted as a daily onslaught - each day a new outrage, each hour another scream - leaving the individual poised between genuine feeling and the addictive thrill of (societal) conflict.

I appreciate the performative nature of modern outrage, the pixelated bloodlust of online discourse, and the fleeting satisfaction of being heard above the din, only to be consumed by self-doubt and the “shame” of (our inner) imperfection.

There is a pervasive sense of alienation and futility, as the masses drown in a sea of middle-class laughter and self-congratulation, all sides failing and fuming in a cacophony of constant noise.

The album’s gaze is unflinching, turning to the stereotypes and self-deprecating caricatures that define regional and national identity - flat-capped, football-soaked, and debt-ridden, boxed into demographic cracks and left to rot, sell-by dated and nationally hated.

Yet, beneath the cynicism, there is a mournful nostalgia for lost innocence and fleeting moments of joy. And the sound of this little masterpiece is aligned with all these feelings. Benefits’ realism is almost brutal in its honesty. The lyrics refuse to look away from the hypocrisy, the performative pride, the endless cycle of blame and shame, the national malaise that festers beneath the surface. Amidst the bleakness, there is something like a persistent, if battered, hope - a longing for connection, for meaning, for the “good old days” when life seemed simpler, even as it was fraught with its own dangers and diseases. A strange way of being resilient, bound to our past and not proposing something new for a real change.

Benefits crafts a vivid, unsparing tableau of (post)modern life - a life that is as scathing as it is empathetic, as cynical as it is quietly yearning.

Beauty of crude language: not gratuitous, but rather a necessary tool for cutting through the layers of denial and self-delusion that shroud everyone’s experience.

I really love the way "constant noise" captures both the literal and figurative idea of an unceasing, pervasive disturbance - whether it be sound or societal clamor - that shapes and often burdens our human everyday life.