Gig Review: Sleaford Mods Will Carjack Your Soul But Stop Back To Make Sure You All Got Home Alright!
I used to review gigs for the newspaper when it was a thing. Now I do them here on Substack. Usually for paid subs only. Sometimes, out of the kindness of my (He)art I’ll let anyone have a read eh…
Sleaford Mods
The Hunter Lounge
Sunday, May 28
The clattering beats and spoken-word rants of England’s Sleaford Mods have, over the last decade in the sunshine and spotlights, moved from comedy rage-fests to deep social commentary. But don’t worry, they also deftly skate right back to the gutter. For a laff.
Jason Williamson (vocalist) and Andrew Fearn (beat maker) both indulge in comedy dance moves that help to propel the energy of an evening and subtly underplay the seriousness of some of the lyrical content.
Williamson’s East Midlands accent makes ‘cunt’ sound like a compliment half the time. We should be lucky enough to be called one. Fearn’s all-day raver, lad-with-a-pint gyrations almost undersell how clever his beats have become. When the Mods first started grinding gears, yes, the music was abrasive and intentionally lo-fi to the point of being more garbage-bin than UK Garage. But now, through the post-punk sludge riffs and the $2 Shop bleeps and bloops there are subtle countermelodies and an underpinning musicality that makes this never just performance art, but always about both the ‘performance’ and the ‘art’.
Fearn might just be the guy that heard the joke about how a tripped-out raver on acid would dance to a car alarm and took it not just for humour but for the foundation of his musical laboratory, albeit one he nightly packs up into a laptop sleeve and carts about the world.
It was sold out. Here in Wellington. And we loved this band from the moment they hit the stage. They feel like the band for all seasons. A comedy duo. A potted history of UK musical anti-(hype) heroes (from Mark. E. Smith to Liam Gallagher, via Shaun Ryder, John Cooper Clarke and, well, I guess you’d say Ian Dury too, why not…) and a couple of well-meaning blokes with axes to grind because life is a bit shit, and the class-system can get fucked eh.
Standing there with a sore back, three years sober, it felt like Jason Williamson was a frontman for me – a new hero. Taking huge gulps from a water bottle, when he wasn’t placing it on his head and mugging for the smart phones. His dad-joke dance moves not just having him imaginary Vogue-ing but all based around his arm in the crook of his back; his makeshift lumbar support for his own bad back a new kind of nearly dance craze. But inimitable as any of the truly great Brit eccentrics.
The Sleafords pumped out the instant-anthems of their latest record, opening with UK Grim’s title track and a brace of new songs before diving further back for McFlurry, and then getting the crowd really grooving with recent/ish banger, Mork ‘n’ Mindy.
Williamson’s bon mots hit hard – and the punishing relentlessness of the beats driving the hard words home all makes for a thrilling live experience. But as people near the front attempted to stage-dive and pushed and shoved, Williamson twice stopped to check in on people, suggesting very calmly at one point that, “we need a few more sensible people down the front”, and even looking deeply, genuinely concerned for one crowd member’s safety. These are grown up larrikins. Ex-troublemakers. Kind souls. Good people. It helps to hammer home the authenticity of the messages. This is music and poetry for the 21st Century, made by real voices, just as eager to celebrate the mundane as to urgently call out the falseness of pop culture, greed and celebrity.
There’s something hypnotic about the sway of seeing Sleaford Mods live. Every song is the same. Every song is different. And the energy surges through the venue – even a terrible venue like the Hunter.
Jobseeker and Tweet Tweet Tweet were big-time set-closers.
Opening act, Big Scout, from Blenheim, were bloody good eh. Real good.
Jim Tannock (bass, vocals), Gregg Slatter (guitar, vocals), and Matthew Hellriegel (drums, vocals) make a type of post-punk clatter, with little trimmings from hardcore, that is instantly in line with what the Sleafords are about, so much so that I worried ahead of the gig that it might seem too samey, might come off as the “wannabe Kiwi version”. But no such worries. They were brutal and proud and urgent and their more song-based excursions served to provide a healthy difference. They had ‘show’. As well as the tune. They could be brilliant soon. And are already driving around the edges of it. A perfect set-starter, great curtain-jerkers.
My sore back, and Wellington’s worst live venue couldn’t diminish a vital, brilliant Sunday night gig. It was great to hear anger so perfectly tuned, so funny, so full of heart.