There are protest songs. And then there are PROTEST SONGS.

Strip away any folk-club romanticism, any Greenwich Village nostalgia—BENEFITS arrive as a full-blooded sonic and literary detonation aimed squarely at the human hellscape of the 2020s. Take the raw venom and feral electricity of Patti Smith’s Babelogue, amplify it, transpose it onto the UK map, and you’re somewhere in the vicinity. A relentless, unforgiving backdrop of music and noise—layered in prose, dense with words—direct, forceful, melodic, and yet genuinely terrifying. The message will be delivered. You will listen.

No lighting show to distract you. Just a deep red backlight, punctuated by actual light for maybe—maybe—thirty seconds all night. So you listen. The audience has to listen, has to pay attention. This is essential music in perfect, brutal unity with its time and place.

Such sounds and emotions don’t arrive by accident—they evolve as a pure reaction, and right now? There is a lot to react against.

Benefits. Your antidote is here. Take your medicine.

A decade has flown by since I last saw Jehnny Beth play live, and tonight she returns to Glasgow with her long-awaited new record and band—arriving like a force of nature that’s been quietly gathering strength in the dark.

Intense. Physically and sonically consuming. A virtuoso of her craft, wielding a singular voice that effortlessly carries tales of despair, damage, and hard-won hope—the full, bruised spectrum of life. Flexing muscle and attitude. Refusing compromise. Carving a path others can follow if they dare.

Poetically tragic. Modern Gallic defiance aimed directly at the throat of the world.

A banshee-like guitar—screaming, groaning, clawing to heights, volumes, and tones that could shatter the glass ceiling of Les Galeries Lafayette—before the music nosedives into deep, visceral grooves of drums and bass that conjure Nine Inch Nails and 1990s Björk’s raw intensity. Comparisons are ultimately futile. Jehnny Beth is Jehnny Beth—inextricably entwined with the production and musicianship of long-term partner Johnny Hostile, a creative force that delivers on every level.

Mesmerising.

She has nothing to prove and everything to ignite—provoking, invoking, demanding a reaction. Adoration. Adulation. She is literally part of the crowd as much as the crowd is part of her. A performer who refuses the obvious, who plays the tracks you expect and then drops an Eraserhead curveball just to remind you who’s in charge.

Jehnny Beth will be one of the last ones standing—true to herself, true to her ideals, still carrying the Savages manifesto like a lit torch. Life is short, can be hard, and yet—wonderfully, stubbornly—it can be magnificent. Like a scar waiting to be scratched.

Be purposeful. Avoid clichés. Challenge everything. Assume nothing.

‘In heaven everything is fine.’ Tonight, everything was beyond fine.

Words: Nick Tammer

Photos: Chris Hogge