“Sexy people and shiny things… processed cheese… shit pieces of art… one hundred per cent cod… you fucking tit rifle.”
On a background of cheap processed beats, Jason Williamson of Nottingham’s Sleaford Mods machine-guns Cameron’s Britain and the everyday gloom and grime that we have to put up with. From my first listen I found the words and the delivery to be captivating, clever and wickedly funny. Think John Cooper Clarke, the seedier end of Pulp, a sprinkling of The Streets and you’re getting warm.
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Soundtracking Britain in 2014 – an intangible economic recovery, zero hour contracts, UKIP and little Englanders clinging onto something that they never really had – it’s impossible to feel indifferent about a group that has its finger so firmly on the pulse. I’m not the first to describe Sleaford Mods as a band of their time, capturing the moment with their frustration and cynicism, but let’s just pause for a minute to think about what it actually means to “capture the moment” and why does it feel like Sleaford Mods are so capable of doing so?
If we look back at Britain over the last 60 years, we can see a clear correlation between contemporary music and the national mood at the time: the beat combos of the swinging sixties and the freedom of a drug-fuelled baby boom generation; the rage of punk when the country was on the cusp of recession and national decline; and the positivity of Britpop that arose when Britain found a hip new identity.
So, in a time of benefits cuts, the selling off of the NHS and the unconvincing promise of economic prosperity, there should be no surprise that a band like Sleaford Mods have floated to the top of the cesspit. While less provocative artists reflect an impossibly rosy Britain – one that is crammed with pop-up food markets, yummy mummies in posh cafes and TV chefs selling ‘traditional’ English food that none of us have ever actually eaten – the Britain described by Sleaford Mods is one that is scarred by dozens of community pubs closing every week, living rooms littered with empty lager cans and part-time jobs in morose convenience stores.
It seems unimaginable that a group that concerns itself with wanking in toilets, Rivita and cracked black pepper could have made the same impression 10 years ago. The misery chord Sleaford Mods strike is one that just didn’t exist in the same way back when it was all skinny jeans and New Labour. Nonetheless, these songs and these words don’t invent themselves and Williamsons’ skill as a lyricist is his striking ability to lacerate the listener with a gush of swears words, observations, nastiness and heart-sinking humour.
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While Williamson’s witty choice words and brash, unique style has earned him comparisons to Mike Skinner and John Cooper Clarke, he shares a similarly scrappy style with Jamie T – only without the sentimental sheen that the Londoner sometimes uses to paint his stories. Both artists crudely cut and paste their observations together, more like a scrapbook than a narrative, excerpts and ideas, no central theme but very modern. Very Twitter, very Facebook – constant distractions and short attention spans.
A recurring theme throughout ‘Divide and Exit,’ Sleaford Mods’ second full-length release, is human waste – namely shit, semen and urine. It feels as if every song has at least some reference to faecal matter, stomach-wrenching smells and “piss on your shoes.” It would be toilet humour if it wasn’t so miserably real. This fills the album with a pervading sense of lowliness and grime.
Besides the loo references, Williamson reels off shopping lists full of lifeless supermarket products. Like the poor cousin of Patrick Bateman in ‘American Psycho,’ where the emptiness of consumer culture is underscored by banal lists of luxury items, Sleaford Mods drown us in lines about frozen cod, breakfast cereal, brands of rice based snacks and ready-meal dinners. We are what we eat, what we wear and what we do and it sounds like we all lead remarkably unwholesome, unstylish and uninteresting lives.
There’s a lot more that could be said about Sleaford Mods, their lyrics and their presence in modern Britain; they tell us about a stark, dark and fruitless existence and they tell us about what and where we’re living today. Time will tell us if Sleaford Mods truly come to define the era that spawned them, but they seem to have grabbed a moment in British cultural, social and economic history in a way no group has done for a good few years.
The duo will never be as popular as their shinier peers and their lack of universality makes it difficult to see them earning any kind of crossover appeal beyond the sweat-covered walls of the UK’s toilet circuit. Nevertheless, it’s fascinating to listen to a group so succinctly tell us about our current lives and existences.
Len Williams
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Filed under: Pop Culture
