Album Review: grandson – 'INERTIA'
Walking his own uncompromising path with a newfound sense of purpose, the genre-hopping vocalist grandson delivers a salvo of heavy protest music with his much-anticipated third album INERTIA.
When Jordan Benjamin, better known under the persona of grandson, released his sophomore album two years ago, it felt that through painful honesty and stark vulnerability there could be hope in the darkness of the world, encapsulated in the album’s title I Love you, I’m Trying. Benjamin’s turn towards social and psychological introspection felt like the natural next step for the maturing American-Canadian musician after the blaring politics of 2020’s Death Of An Optimist and his searing 2017 breakout hit ‘Blood // Water’.
And yet the end of May this year saw grandson release ‘BRAINROT’, the first single of his third album INERTIA. It was a thunderous return, featuring colossal guitar riffs and razor-sharp lyricism that ruthlessly targeted every hallmark of political decay in “the hell we’re living in”. Benjamin’s words hit like a sledgehammer, remarking “Watch the world fall of its axis, watch the bombs go off paid for by your taxes” and even more damningly “Watch it all through your new smartphone, with a battery mined by a child in a warzone”. Striking at the core of how our reliance on technology and social media stifles dissent (“Genocide with a right click”), the fatalist track laments our unjust, dopamine starved society: “The overlapping disaster, intersectional violence”.
Subsequently, ‘BRAINROT’ was followed up with the incendiary ‘SELF-IMMOLATION’, two minutes of headbanging furore inspired by the death of Air Force serviceman Aaron Bushnell, who set fire to himself outside the Israeli embassy in February last year. Crystallising Bushnell’s martyrdom in song, grandson notes, “He was awoken to the atrocities being committed, and it was extremely moving to see him take the ultimate sacrifice just to be heard”. With a sound large enough to fill any arena, the explosive two-minute track signalled the ferocity and urgency that informed grandson’s approach to his third LP.
Following a break from touring, Benjamin was able to overcome personal mental health challenges, refocus on therapy and after leaving the bloated corporate boardrooms of major labels, was provided the singular clarity to develop grandson’s first true rock record. The instrumental heaviness and relentlessness of his half-rap, half-sung vocal delivery earnt comparisons to 2000’s Nu-metal acts such as Limp Bizkit or Linkin Park, whilst Benjamin himself immersed himself in the music of political rockers and stadium-scale bands from Rage Against The Machine to Foo Fighters and System of a Down. Working with producer Mike Crossey (The 1975, 21 Pilots, Arctic Monkeys, Foals, Wolf Alice, Yungblud) and brandishing the unsmoothed edges only possible with his own independent label, what emerged was a dark and original record, and grandson’s heaviest body of work to date. This more jagged sound makes Benjamin’s rallying cries all the more visceral, shouting on ‘LITTLE WHITE LIES’ “Fascism for all the boys and girls, fuck that we will not bow down to authority”.
But make no mistake: despite zooming out from the individual to the structural, INERTIA retains grandson’s trademark authenticity and vulnerability. The album’s most personal song is ‘YOU MADE ME THIS WAY’, a four-minute deconstruction of his childhood and upbringing. Exclaiming in the emphatic chorus “I am all the way undone”, the anthemic track transforms the woes of Benjamin’s premature birth, his deadbeat dad, vulnerable mother and jealous stepfather into a universalised narrative of decaying health services, diminishing reproductive rights and political betrayal. Singing “You made me this way” takes on dual meanings both for Benjamin’s youth and as a confrontation of the political forces that radicalised him. The track also serves as a testament to understanding the motivations of marginalised individuals, rather than simply vilifying them. As he notes, “people who victimize are ultimately victims themselves”.
Whilst grandson’s never pulled his punches before – his 2017 breakout hit ‘Blood // Water’ delivered the suckerpunch “We’ll never get free, lambs to the slaughter… the price of your greed is your son and your daughter”– INERTIA takes listeners into uncharted territory. The 10-track record is a direct responding to the political decay, economic malaise and social disarray of modern America. INERTIA responds in the only way grandson knows how: informed by the philosophy that music fights for social justice. It’s music that clamours for class solidarity in the awareness that “across any political spectrum, people stand to benefit from the consolidation of power in the hands of the many against the few.”
As musical resistance to systems of oppression, none are safe from grandson’s wrath. ‘AUTONOMOUS DELIVERY ROBOT’ lambasts techno-corporate overreach into the private sphere, from “the “Self-driving vehicle from San Francisco” to “the Amazon panopticon self-checkout”. Amongst larynx-shredding vocals, ‘BELLS OF WAR’ similarly critiques the bloodthirstiness of the bloated military-industrial complex. He later takes aim at the hypocrisy of religion on ‘LITTLE WHITE LIES’, stating in a spoken word introduction that “Jesus was a 5’4 brown-skinned socialist”. And whilst extolling the undying strength of the revolution in the following track ‘GOD IS AN ANIMAL’, Benjamin concedes “Aint no heaven waiting for me after, so I’m gonna let it burn”.
Yet the jewel in INERTIA’s crown is penultimate track ‘WHO’S THE ENEMY?’, featuring kindred spirits of action Bob Vylan. INERTIA’s sole collaboration couldn’t be timelier, with the British punk duo’s headline-grabbing summer cementing their place at the forefront of the UK’s musical movement for Palestinian liberation. Slicing through media misdirection, the track confronts a plethora of shocking truths:
“Is it the boycott or is it the system leaving the little boys shot? Is it the boy that changed his identity, got told it’s a felony?”
“Is it radicalised men or is it the country that colonised them?”
“Who survives long enough to decide the right side of history? Who provides policy that divides with more pain and misery?”
In the fading denouement grandson frankly states “Left and right will never change…, dropping bombs and making money”, and from the hazy vestiges of Benjamin’s words of apathy emerges a transatlantic response from Bob Vylan frontman Pascal Robinson-Foster. His echoing voice paints the picture of how the legacies of colonialism inform the injustices of today, uttering “It wasn’t fair when they took the life out of our hands, and rinsed our resources to meet their demands”. “Still labelled a threat, homeland ridden with debt,” he continues, defiantly concluding “but the enemy we face hasn’t killed us yet”.
Closing track ‘PULL THE TRIGGER’ continues this stark honesty as grandson ominously ruminates on the role of violence in protest. He remarks “It’s a good thing I picked up the pen or it would’ve been a machine gun I picked up instead”. Yet there’s a measuredness behind Benjamin’s sharpened words: “the best weapon you can arm yourself with is a book and a microphone,” he concurs, “so you can understand historical context and the ways in which this is all cyclical.” Accordingly, grandson headlined the prestigious activism-led Left Field Tent at this summer’s Glastonbury, and his recent sold-out shows in London, LA and Hamburg raised thousands of pounds for LGBTQ rights, migrant rights and supporting children in warzones.
There is hope and power in the unity that INERTIA strives to foster, even if entrenched division may make unity seem impossible. “I believe that finding connection with one another, through music or otherwise, and making collective demands for a brighter, better future, can lead us to a more holistic way of living, thinking and consuming,” grandson states. “It all starts with a cathartic release of energy. Meet you in the pit.”
Words by Taran Will
