Sleaford Mods’ frontman Jason Williamson recently revealed that lately he’s been listening to Alexander O’Neal, Chaka Khan and Luther Vandross, although the Nottinghamshire duo haven’t suddenly gone soul or R&B.
However, Andrew Fearn’s backing tracks are forever evolving and are a fair distance from 2013’s breakthrough, Austerity Dogs. The terrific Kebab Spiders is powered by two alternate basslines: one sounds like the sort of thing the great James Jamerson used to lay down for Motown and the other is clubbier, almost Belgian new beat. The brooding OBCT could be Depeche Mode or the Cure, until Williamson comes in and it includes, of all things, a kazoo solo. The highly melodic When You Come Up to Me, meanwhile, would be a lost 80s new romantic synth ballad were it delivered in any other voice. As ever, though, it’s Williamson’s trademark bark – a caustic, observant, irritant, unforgiving mix of John Cooper Clarke and Mark E Smith – which renders the Mods instantly recognisable. They are increasingly, as John Peel said of the Fall: “Always different, always the same.”
Despite its title, Eton Alive isn’t a grand statement on the health of the nation or the ever-powerful English ruling class. It prefers to critique this troubled isle through the minutiae of daily life, which is perhaps even more effective and damning. The songs offer snapshots of a society fraying at the edges, from Top It Up’s drug use at a drug-user’s funeral, to Kebab Spiders’ “indie documentarists, highlighting pain” of reality TV’s class-voyeurism-as-entertainment. Williamson’s ire is scattergun and bleakly funny, careering from “white dog shit” to Flipside’s swipes at the realities of modern pop success (“Hammer of the Gods, my arse”) and Blur’s Graham Coxon (“looks like a leftwing Boris Johnson”). Only the xylophone-led Discourse, which Williamson sings as much as narrates, could be seen as a national address, but it could just as equally apply to the crumbling of human emotional connections as offer a way out of Brexit (“there’s only one course, discourse”). As ever, Sleaford Mods are a voice that must be heard.
