Sleaford Mods shouldn’t be successful. They make an uncompromising hybrid of hip-hop and punk. They rant about politics in a coarse stream of consciousness. They are both in their forties, which is pushing it to be considered hip. Their lyrics are distinctively doom-laden and their stage presence is best described as swaggering. But somehow, it works.
It’s been a gradual rise for Jason Williamson, 44, and his partner Andrew Fearn, 43, with several stints on the dole, countless crap jobs and a minor drug habit along the way. Now, the Nottingham-based duo are enjoying critical and commercial success—their Glastonbury Festival performance was among the top five most shared clips on BBC iPlayer, and their new album, the intriguingly titled Key Markets, has just reached number 10 in the UK album charts. The critics have lined up to lavish praise on this, their third studio offering, with Q Magazine calling it “the finest album of its kind since (The Streets’) Original Pirate Material” and The Independent predicting that it will “catapult them into the mainstream”. On the record Williamson rails against the duplicity of modern party politics and spits insults at the liberal elite in a broad Midlands accent, while Fearn uses simple loops and drum-heavy basslines to craft an electronic interpretation of the punk sound they grew up with.
Sleaford Mods’ increasingly broad appeal suggests that in this age of austerity, with traditional political structures increasingly under scrutiny and a resurgent left-wing movement looking likely to propel Jeremy Corbyn to the helm of the Labour Party, there is an audience for a band pushing a more socially conscious sound. But are they as politically savvy as their lyrics might suggest, or is it all an affectation of working class rage designed to generate headlines? I sat down with Williamson to find out.
Everyone in music is talking about your surprise success, while everyone in politics is talking about Jeremy Corbyn’s rise from obscurity to become the frontrunner in the Labour leadership race. Do you think he would make a good party leader?
It’s the honesty of him, and the fact that he’s an authentic Labour politician who stands up against the tide of neoliberalism which is swamping the party. It’s disgusting. The [other leadership contenders] all look really punchable. I’m sorry, but it makes me really angry. People say we don’t need to shift back to the left, but what is the Labour Party if it isn’t left?... Let it become a grassroots party that people can believe in, instead of something they feel shut out from.
How did Sleaford Mods come about?
I started it about five or six years ago on my own. By the time I met Andrew I had sharpened up my technique and had got better at putting my words together. I was moving away from self-pity and starting to talk about the world around me.
You are from the East Midlands town of Grantham, but the band is named after another neighbouring town. Why did you choose Sleaford specifically?
The word “Grantham” is a bit stodgy, it stops and starts, whereas “Sleaford” rolls off the tongue. I also have childhood memories of the town from the 1980s. As a kid my parents would take me to the cinema in Sleaford. We got chips after. It was a real treat. I liked the idea of staking a claim to the bit of the country that I come from.
Was it a conscious decision to start writing about politics in your lyrics and use them to give the band a distinctive angry edge?
It was more born out of a feeling of alienation. I felt like a failure because I hadn’t acquired a decent job and couldn’t afford to do what everyone else around me was doing. There was this complete passion for making money among people—people would sit in the pub and talk about ways to make money, or how much money they had. At the time I was completely skint, so I had a different point of view.
Do you think your desire to speak out against the Conservative government is in any way tied to you being from Margaret Thatcher’s hometown?
No, not at all. I didn't care about anything politically related until maybe a few years ago, and that was only due to my own bad experience of trying to survive on nothing. I drive past the house she grew up in [which has a blue plaque] every time I go to visit my family…the local museum even has a Thatcher area, it’s unreal.
Your lyrics often lampoon prominent political figures such as Ed Miliband who you call a “chirping cunt”, are you trying to educate your audience or are the words more of a rallying cry?
I wouldn’t like to say I’m rallying people because that takes it into the realm of me being some kind of leader which is silly. I’m not the voice of a generation—it’s just me spouting off about all the things that are doing my head in. We are musicians at the end of the day, so it’s about trying to find that perfect song which says something about you. I think that’s every musician’s mission, everyone that takes it seriously anyway.
The Sleaford Mods sound marries hip-hop and punk cultures, which is an unusual mix. How did you hit on that combination?
We didn’t sit down and draw up a plan. The punk part was accidental—we just started listening to [certain songs] again on YouTube, some I remembered from when I was about 10 or 11 years old. I just thought “Gordon Bennett these sound great—the aggro of it and the don’t-give-a-fuckness of it.”
Your new album Key Markets appears to challenge the economic status quo more vocally than your previous work, did you choose that title specifically because it could be interpreted in that way?
Yes, it’s an on-going theme from our previous album, Divide and Exit, but the ideas have become a bit sharper. The title actually comes from an old supermarket I used to visit in my childhood. I would go in there and it would be brightly lit, with cheap food on the shelves and points of sale, trying to entice you to buy. So, I was purely referencing the supermarket, but once we had decided on that as the album title then we did spot the potential to spin off it in a political sense.
It’s been a gradual rise for Jason Williamson, 44, and his partner Andrew Fearn, 43, with several stints on the dole, countless crap jobs and a minor drug habit along the way. Now, the Nottingham-based duo are enjoying critical and commercial success—their Glastonbury Festival performance was among the top five most shared clips on BBC iPlayer, and their new album, the intriguingly titled Key Markets, has just reached number 10 in the UK album charts. The critics have lined up to lavish praise on this, their third studio offering, with Q Magazine calling it “the finest album of its kind since (The Streets’) Original Pirate Material” and The Independent predicting that it will “catapult them into the mainstream”. On the record Williamson rails against the duplicity of modern party politics and spits insults at the liberal elite in a broad Midlands accent, while Fearn uses simple loops and drum-heavy basslines to craft an electronic interpretation of the punk sound they grew up with.
Sleaford Mods’ increasingly broad appeal suggests that in this age of austerity, with traditional political structures increasingly under scrutiny and a resurgent left-wing movement looking likely to propel Jeremy Corbyn to the helm of the Labour Party, there is an audience for a band pushing a more socially conscious sound. But are they as politically savvy as their lyrics might suggest, or is it all an affectation of working class rage designed to generate headlines? I sat down with Williamson to find out.
Everyone in music is talking about your surprise success, while everyone in politics is talking about Jeremy Corbyn’s rise from obscurity to become the frontrunner in the Labour leadership race. Do you think he would make a good party leader?
It’s the honesty of him, and the fact that he’s an authentic Labour politician who stands up against the tide of neoliberalism which is swamping the party. It’s disgusting. The [other leadership contenders] all look really punchable. I’m sorry, but it makes me really angry. People say we don’t need to shift back to the left, but what is the Labour Party if it isn’t left?... Let it become a grassroots party that people can believe in, instead of something they feel shut out from.
How did Sleaford Mods come about?
I started it about five or six years ago on my own. By the time I met Andrew I had sharpened up my technique and had got better at putting my words together. I was moving away from self-pity and starting to talk about the world around me.
You are from the East Midlands town of Grantham, but the band is named after another neighbouring town. Why did you choose Sleaford specifically?
The word “Grantham” is a bit stodgy, it stops and starts, whereas “Sleaford” rolls off the tongue. I also have childhood memories of the town from the 1980s. As a kid my parents would take me to the cinema in Sleaford. We got chips after. It was a real treat. I liked the idea of staking a claim to the bit of the country that I come from.
Was it a conscious decision to start writing about politics in your lyrics and use them to give the band a distinctive angry edge?
It was more born out of a feeling of alienation. I felt like a failure because I hadn’t acquired a decent job and couldn’t afford to do what everyone else around me was doing. There was this complete passion for making money among people—people would sit in the pub and talk about ways to make money, or how much money they had. At the time I was completely skint, so I had a different point of view.
Do you think your desire to speak out against the Conservative government is in any way tied to you being from Margaret Thatcher’s hometown?
No, not at all. I didn't care about anything politically related until maybe a few years ago, and that was only due to my own bad experience of trying to survive on nothing. I drive past the house she grew up in [which has a blue plaque] every time I go to visit my family…the local museum even has a Thatcher area, it’s unreal.
Your lyrics often lampoon prominent political figures such as Ed Miliband who you call a “chirping cunt”, are you trying to educate your audience or are the words more of a rallying cry?
I wouldn’t like to say I’m rallying people because that takes it into the realm of me being some kind of leader which is silly. I’m not the voice of a generation—it’s just me spouting off about all the things that are doing my head in. We are musicians at the end of the day, so it’s about trying to find that perfect song which says something about you. I think that’s every musician’s mission, everyone that takes it seriously anyway.
The Sleaford Mods sound marries hip-hop and punk cultures, which is an unusual mix. How did you hit on that combination?
We didn’t sit down and draw up a plan. The punk part was accidental—we just started listening to [certain songs] again on YouTube, some I remembered from when I was about 10 or 11 years old. I just thought “Gordon Bennett these sound great—the aggro of it and the don’t-give-a-fuckness of it.”
Your new album Key Markets appears to challenge the economic status quo more vocally than your previous work, did you choose that title specifically because it could be interpreted in that way?
Yes, it’s an on-going theme from our previous album, Divide and Exit, but the ideas have become a bit sharper. The title actually comes from an old supermarket I used to visit in my childhood. I would go in there and it would be brightly lit, with cheap food on the shelves and points of sale, trying to entice you to buy. So, I was purely referencing the supermarket, but once we had decided on that as the album title then we did spot the potential to spin off it in a political sense.
