London
30 January 2015
The day didn’t start well. A blocked drain, forgetting the keys to work and having to go back and fetch them and then a slip on rainy plastic, a mid-air semi-cartwheel (“semi-cartwheeled headfirst in the rain,” as Edward Ka-Spel would say) into the side of a skip and a resultant injury resembling nothing so much as the remnants of a failed scalping all combined to make it the sort of day when there’s nothing really for it but to go and see Sleaford Mods. Fortunately, the day ended with me going to see Sleaford Mods, so it all turned out nice in the end.
It’s an early show, presumably so the Electric Ballroom can be cleared out in time for whatever passes for a club night in bloody Camden these days, which means that when I’d normally be settling down with a gin and tonic and listening to The Archers, I am instead standing pint in hand watching punk legend Steve Ignorant with his folk-pop combo Slice Of Life. Smartly clad in waistcoat and hat (and trousers and stuff, obviously, it’s not THAT kind of show) he’s every inch the amiable Cockney geezer, and for the first couple of numbers I can’t quite shake the idea of a slightly more cross Chas’n’Dave, a description whose efficacy will depend entirely on your opinion of Chas’n’Dave.As the set progresses, however, and the songs become angrier in tone, as does the in-between chat, the band really come into their own. He’s always been better at shouting than he has at singing, and the more shouting he does, the better they sound. Eventually all thoughts of Chas’n’Dave are banished, and the final result is something a lot more like Tindersticks, only a Tindersticks whose lead singer is no longer the maudlin bloke propping up the bar, but the angry bloke ranting at anyone who cares to listen. It’s all pretty engaging, and spiced up with anecdotes which largely involve pubs, as well as a venomous take on “Oranges And Lemons” (“when I grow rich, say the bells of Shoreditch” is delivered with such vitriol it makes “Here comes a chopper to chop off your head” seem like the only reasonable option), and there are times when the delivery and lyrics could easily have been lifted off some previously unknown Crass classic. Oh yeah, and they do a brief version of “So What” from Feeding Of The 5000, which goes down a storm. As does his solo Sleaford Mods cover.
And speaking of angry blokes ranting down the pub, here’s Jason Williamson, introducing “Bunch Of Cunts” with a shout of “BUNCH OF CUNTS!” as the Mods take the stage with the least spectacular yet most engaging stage show I’ve seen in a long while. On record, Williamson’s the angry man in the pub. Live, he’s the angry man who OWNS the pub, and he can’t stay still, circling the stage alternately preening, hand on the small of his back, slapping his head like a violent tic and (rather bizarrely) miming having tits as he spits out his rhymes.He is, however, almost upstaged by Andrew Fearn who, having already done all the hard work at home laying down the minimalist electro-punk beats, basslines and samples, can’t be arsed with all that sitting at a laptop trying to pretend you’re actually doing something bollocks and instead simply, and brilliantly, just stands there bopping from foot to foot, one hand in his pocket and the other holding a beer. Basically, he drinks beer for the whole set. And it’s hard not to think, watching him, that he has the best job in the world.
Indeed, if Steve Ignorant’s Slice Of Life were (briefly) an angry Chas’n’Dave, then the only comparable pop duo for Sleaford Mods would be a glue-sniffing Pet Shop Boys. Only I doubt they’ll get invited on The Archers any time soon, not while Williamson keeps up the hilariously creative swearing. I don’t think anyone expected them to get this big, certainly not the band themselves, and they seem to see no reason to change their act just because they’re now standing on a bigger stage. This is a set that could be performed in your living room, unless you live with your mum and she doesn’t like swearing.Of course, it’s not all about the swearing. All that stuff about swearing being the sign of a limited vocabulary is bollocks (or as Mark Thomas once described itn “pusillanimous, narrow-minded, semantically vacuous fucking old wank”). But you know this, right? Because you’re not an idiot, and you know that William Burroughs is a thing, Irvine Welsh is a thing, John Cooper Clarke is a thing and the Wu-Tang Clan are many things, sometimes even all at once. This is linguistically dazzling stuff, Williamson’s flow just as smooth live as on record, although with the occasional added “BOLLOCKS!” for effect. And the crowd absolutely loves it, especially the ex-skins, who I promised I’d mention.
Well, I say “the crowd”, but it’s hard to tell whether the hipsters love it, because they’re all standing there studiously pretending to be above it all while the Mods are basically abusing them (oh, and I’m not sure about the two youngsters who seem to have missed moshing lessons and are having an actual fight. Although thanks are due to the guys who pulled them apart, because it provided me with a clear channel to get to the bar, like I was a king whose path was lined with angry children. And you’ll note I managed to relate that anecdote without references to “pulling them off” or “easing my passage”. Because I am a GROWN-UP). But then the Mods are basically abusing everyone; it’s kind of what they do. And if all you do care about is the swearing, then they really deliver on that front as well.And then it’s all over. Far too early. I mean, it’s not even ten. But, y’know, they were The Mods. They were The Mods. They were, they were, they were The Mods. And they were fucking great.
-Justin Farrington-
