In the technical sense, one cannot speak of Sleaford Mods – a duo from the East Midlands of England, comprising vocalist Jason Williamson and beat-maker Andrew Fearn – as having "greatest hits". Their records do not sell in large numbers and they don't get played on mainstream radio. However, if a greatest-hit is the song that is truly representative of what a band does, then for Sleaford Mods, one of their greatest hits is a song called Jobseeker.
As with much of their work, it derives from an unenvied side of British culture. Supermarkets, court appearances and bad coffee – all make their appearance in the band's output. In the case of Jobseeker, we join Williamson as he attempts to "sign on" – ie arrange to receive his unemployment-benefit allowance. Williamson's delivery is occasionally compared to hip-hop, but it is the inverse of that genre's aspirational lyrical ease. A key line here is: "Can of Strongbow I'm a mess/Desperately clutching a leaflet on depression/Supplied to me by the NHS." Strongbow is a brand of cider (not exactly an aspirational one); the NHS, the British National Health Service. The band do not work in a glamorous milieu.
They are a ruggedly authentic proposition, and their songs – a mixture of semi-autobiographical revenge fantasy; street-level reportage and increasingly, on this record, a bitter complaint against the economic status quo – are born out of their experiences at the sharp end.
Williamson (after many years of attempting to break into music) began Sleaford Mods as a solo project. He describes his eureka moment as arriving after writing a song called Teacher Faces Porn Charges, a local newspaper headline that encapsulated perfectly his wretched circumstances at the time: going to the local shop in his pyjamas, with money put into his bank account by his mother.
His time since then has been spent incrementally growing Sleaford Mods. The arrival of Fearn developed a trademark sound, grimy basslines and basic drumbeats of varying tempos, over which Williamson could air his grievances. For all their experiences of unemployment, the band work particularly hard: repeatedly playing long tours all over the country. Only after several years of this did Williamson give up his day job (ironically enough, as a benefits adviser in Nottingham), a few months ago.
Sleaford Mods have begun to catch on. They have been written about by academics, comedians and political columnists as if their work demands recognition in a wider context outside music. Certainly, Key Markets, the band's third conventionally released album (there were previously several low-circulation CD-Rs and singles), makes no concessions to appeal to a more mainstream music scene. Fearn's beats are still aggressive, as is Williamson's outlook (and language). On the album, the singer harangues enemies local and international, named and not, real and imagined, in terms that cannot be printed here. Though the band members are in their mid-40s, they show no intention of slackening, mellowing or compromising.
At this year's Glastonbury Festival, with their show broadcast to a large TV audience, the band began their set with a song from this new album called Silly Me, in which Williamson ranted about a former acquaintance from Birmingham: "Bragging on about your music moves/You run a crap club in Brum/You lose/I won …" Another song from the new album called In Quiet Streets explicitly sets out the band's agenda, with an amusing non sequitur reference to a mainstream television-comedy duo of the 1980s: "We don't want radio play," Williamson announces. "We're not Cannon & Ball …" An expletive has been deleted here.
Obviously, such a release makes no concessions. As such, Key Markets offers an equivalent experience in British high-street culture as one of those opportunities to learn a foreign language by "immersion", in which you converse only in the new language. The title itself is a pun: "Key Markets", as a person the same age as the band members would know, was the name of a supermarket chain in the United Kingdom in the 1970s and early 1980s. Serving the requirements of "key markets", of course, is also what a more commercially minded group would be strategically aiming for with their anticipated new album.
Instead, the record rejoices in its hard-line presentation. This year, Williamson has made more commercial appearances – guesting on a track on the new album by The Prodigy, for example – but Key Markets is not an album that will suddenly find a new, casual audience. Rather, it is a vibrant, contemporary document, occasionally morbid, sometimes nostalgic (one song laments the demise of the suburban garden) and a vivid snapshot of language and attitudes. "I've got a latte on," Williamson says at one point, in a way that would have completely been unintelligible 15 years ago. "I'm easy …"
Though not young, the duo of Sleaford Mods are fired with a zealot's energy, and Key Markets offers a profusion of ideas and information. Over the album's 40 minutes, you will hear reference made to: eBay, tablet devices, e-ticketing, needlessly strong "guest ales", soundchecks and the character Snake Plissken, the hero of the film, Escape from New York. There are several sideswipes at Boris Johnson, the mayor of London, and jabs at Kate Bush, Arctic Monkeys, and the fact that one member of Blur makes artisanal cheese while another sought to stand as a parliamentary candidate. As the album proceeds, evidence subtly mounts against capitalism and privilege.
The culmination of this is in a song called Rupert Trousers, which might benefit from some preparatory notes. The British cartoon character Rupert the Bear wears tweed, check trousers – and outlandish trousers are perceived by the band as being a feature of "country dress" favoured by the wealthy. Over an eerie and slyly groovy beat, the song then casts an impressionistic eye over scenes of entitlement: "full houses/woolly jumpers/flags from the boat lake/Rupert trousers …" Amid their grievance, the band devise their own kind of beauty.
The band’s alarmingly rugged appearance and strong language might possibly give the false impression that Sleaford Mods are yobs who have somehow intimidated their way into prominence. This is a song, and an album, to revise that opinion and to offer a more valuable lesson. Don’t be fooled by appearances of any kind – you don’t have to dig too deeply to discover that there’s something much deeper going on under the surface.
This album is available on Amazon.
John Robinson is associate editor of Uncut and the Guardian Guide’s rock critic. He lives in London.
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