'Kill the Lights' Is Benches’ Lush Indie-Rock Soundtrack for the Lovelorn and Lost: Album Review
- Abby Anderson
- 6 days ago
- 2 min read
Stand-out tracks: "Kill the Lights" "Reach"
Our favorites: "Naive" "Here Come the Bitter Tears"
Release date: May 23, 2025
For fans of: Del Water Gap, Beach House, Inhaler
A dark, indie-rock rumination on isolation and detachment has never seemed so alluring as it does when illustrated by benches. Their latest project, Kill The Lights, released May 23, balances perfectly between bedroom rock and sonic immersion, creating a soundscape that parallels the project's conceptual content with such precision that the lines blur between the band's anxieties and your own. Following their support gig with rock band Inhaler last year, Benches is already pushing into new ground on establishing their identity in alt-rock as the voices of committal seclusion. Comprised of lead vocalist and rhythm guitarist Anson Kelley, drummer Ethan Bowers, lead guitarist Evan Ojeda, and bassist Charlie Baird, Benches is now gearing up for their own summer headlining shows and an appearance at Lollapalooza - and Kill The Lights is exactly the soundtrack to pull live audiences into reveling in the passionate melancholia of Benches long after the lights have faded.
Setting the scene without saying anything at all, Benches open Kill the Lights with a pulsating instrumental in "Departure," allowing the dissonance to be felt rather than explained. Echoing that dissonace with a rhythm that feels just out of reach, "Naive" pulls at the strings of an unraveling spiral over the maddening desire for committment in a world predisposed to reject it. Leaning on distorted vocals and grungy production that would be at home on a record from The Killers or Beach House, Kelley's voice reaches for glimpses of light through the gaps left by the brain-twisting instrumental, singing a deliciously dejected repetition of, "You're so naive / When you get too close to me."
Softening their hard exterior on the title track, the band bares brutal honesty as relationships and music swirl like oil and vinegar in their lyrics. Pulling back the vertiginous production heard in much of the rest of the project, the music speaks less as the words speak more: "I still get that fantasy that tears me apart / I sure was a fighter when I played the guitar / These fingers got stiff, I took another sip / And let you go." Rising and falling through "Orchid" and "Reach," the latter opens up wider, allowing Benches to loosen the weight on their shoulders left by love on the precipice of falling apart; they echo, "One last time we'll lose our minds," reveling in an ominous lover before they turn to a ghost of the past.
A delicately balancing dream leaning on synthesizers and syncopated, raw drums, "Here Come The Bitter Tears" closes the project with an ache for more. Distant yet craving for closeness, guarded yet musing, Benches practice was they preach: "You know I tried to warn you / I hate to see you cry / But you're never on my mind." Despite the chilling crush of a love left to die, Benches masterfully closes Kill the Lights with a pull at the ache in a heart searching for a glimmer of light in dark.
TO LEARN MORE ABOUT BENCHES:
WEBSITE | INSTAGRAM | YOUTUBE | SPOTIFY | APPLE MUSIC
[SPOTIFY EMBED]
