There were some among the first generation of punk who decried the Sex Pistols for being so bourgeoisie as to put out an LP. Singles were punk: short, cheap and disposable. Albums were the domain of bloated acts like Van der Graaf, Stills & Palmer or whatever. A Pistols long-player would have happened sooner or later, of course. It’s the way of all corporate things, and it doesn’t actually make much of a difference anyway. It’s the music that matters. But I admit nevertheless to having felt the same way about Britain’s Benefits, who’ve been releasing tracks one at a time via Bandcamp and YouTube since 2019. Their first album came out April 21 (LP, CD, download on Invada) to rounds of acclaim as deserved as they were unexpected. NME, The Quietus and Rolling Stone have all been eating it up, another thing that would have spoken to first-gen punks as pompous and privilege. But really, it’s not Benefits fault they’re so good. Nails is vital and visceral, brutal and contemporary. Their sound is huge and their vitriol not just theatrical. Vocalist Kingsley Hall switches between screams of absolute fury and impassioned poetic oratory that fits in with the talkcore trend (cf. Dry Cleaning, Fontaines D.C., Gilla Band, Yard Act). Behind him is a three-piece machine that can pull off electro grind, thick ambient and punishing rhythms. They seem recently to have dropped guitars entirely from their setup, going with drums and electronics, but that in no way softens their blows. On “Traitors,” one of the earlier singles included on the album, Hall imparts over a tense drone “Rule Britannia playing on the radio twenty-four hours a day / Union flags hung in every street / Spitfires fly past, homeless pile up, no one gives a fuck / We get the future you deserve.” Johnny Rotten famously, menacingly, claimed that the Pistols were “the future, your future,” on their “God Save the Queen.” Almost a half century later, Benefits are left to clean up the mess, or at least live in it.
And while we’re being incendiary, Toronto’s Fucked Up have issued Cops, a digital-only three-track EP of old-school short and fast cuts. Like Benefits, they whip up genuine ire on the two original cuts, and then drop in a bashing, 98-second Orbital cover. Twenty-two years in and they can still swing the unexpected.
Ghösh stories. Also graduating from the singles format is the duo-with-a-full-band-sound Ghösh. Following a string of digi-singles (not to mention opening for My Chemical Romance at UBS Arena last summer), their five-track EP PRISSMASSIVE comes out May 26 from Ramp Local with a cassette edition that includes eight older tracks. Vocalist Symphony Spell met future bandmate Zach Fairbrother while working in a Philadelphia pizzeria, where the two bonded over a shared love for nu metal bands like Korn and Limp Bizkit. Fortunately, they saw past that commonality. Alt-90’s is there in the mix, but so are rap, funk, drum’n’bass and a healthy bit of not taking themselves too seriously, all amalgamated into what they call “nü jungle US grime phonk.” The best of the new set is lead single “Devil Lady” (look for the video), a slap back at Spell’s Baptist upbringing but also a raver full of female swagger.
The end of science. Cincinatti’s Stella Research Committee has sadly—according to reports from, well, them—put an end to their investigations. The neo-no-wave outfit posted its intention to cease operations on their Facebook page at the end of March, in anticipation it seems of their new and now final album. “Annnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnd we’re donezo. It was a great run, it was great fun,” ran the whole of the announcement. Indeed, it was quite a ride for the band, four albums as Stella before adding the “Research Committee” and issuing A Proposed Method for Determining Sanding Fitness in 2021. That was their first great record and now Killed Alive (self-released cassette and download out May 12) is their second and last. The guitar / synth / drum trio has echoes of Downtown legends DNA with Arto Lindsay and Ikue Mori (documented on the 1978 Brian Eno–produced compilation No New York), but with a fiercer edge. The 13 tracks on the new album seem held together by a tension between exploding and falling apart. Jagged guitar riffs, off kilter rhythms, and deep bass undercurrents vibrate restlessly against Kevin Hall’s desperate pronouncements about consumerism and paranoia. It’s a fantastic fright. The album’s closer and seemingly the band’s final statement, “C-Suite Overhaul,” is seven-and-a-half minutes of overdrive, calling to mind some other NYC punk elders—the great Suicide—with reverb-drenched moans and circuit-blown synths. Killed Alive is a pulsating swan song of discontent.
Fly the Anguished Skies. Lori Goldston might not be a household name, but her cello has been heard on recordings by Earth, Nirvana, The Wedding Present, and many others. She’s also at least half of what makes Ascend Ascend: Janaka Stucky Live In Seattle With Lori Goldston a transcendent listen. The album is, essentially, a reading of Janaka Stucky’s extended poem, which could be a sermon in a Kenneth Anger film. The poem itself was published in book form by Jack White’s Third Man Records in 2019. The performance will be released on LP and download by Neurot Recordings on May 12, mixed, and mastered by Mell Dettmer, who has engineered thick, resonant albums for Earth as well as Sunn O))) and Wolves In The Throne Room. Divided into four parts, or four sides of the vinyl issue, the dark meditation stretches to nearly an hour, with Stucky and Goldston performing together on the first and last parts. The second section is 11 minutes of a cappella pagan plainchant, parting the clouds for the album’s true apex. While its Stucky who sets the tone, Goldston’s nearly 14-minute solo (save for a bit of Stucky sobbing), occupyies the third side of the album, resplendent and harrowing. She begins the section mimicking Stucky’s oratory beautifully before developing it in to her own variations and eventually adding sawtooth distortion to her cello. It is, to be sure, Stucky’s show, but Goldston’s section is unforgettable, and should send at least a few scrambling through album credits to rediscover where they’ve heard her before.
