Sleaford Mods:Streets Ain't The Same When You Get Older.

"Who knew they got the experts in" - Kebab Spider, Sleaford Mods.

Yesterday morning one of my best mates Bugsy died (just 51) and it feels almost inappropriate to be writing about anything else except him at the moment. More likely than not I'll write something in depth about him and what he meant to me eventually, but emotions are still too raw at the moment and the funeral hasn't even been announced, let alone taken place, yet. So for now, before starting my review, I'd just like to dedicate it to a brilliant mate who'd almost definitely been with me at this gig if he'd been able to be. Certainly, I could never ever hope to list the huge amount of gigs we've attended together in the past.

Sleaford Mods are just his sort of band. Angry, impassioned, humorous, surreal, punk/grime spirited, and featuring some pretty basic, but powerful, synth noises. Within the last lustrum or so they've risen, quite remarkably, to the status of elder statesmen of sorts. Probably not the sort of thing they aspire to but each new album, hell - each new gig, seems to serve as a state of the nation address.

Reading's Sub 89 is considerably smaller than Brixton Academy (where I saw them, and wrote about them, back in 2017) but venue size, surprisingly - as I've previously remarked, doesn't seem to matter with ver Mods. Jason Williamson and Andrew Fearn have proved themselves more than capable of working any size room and on a boozy Friday night playing to a crowd of their peers (agewise at least for the most part) they absolutely fucking rocked.

The opening trio of tracks from Eton Alive (Into the Payzone, Flipside, Subtraction) acted as a gentle livener (relative, this IS Sleaford Mods) before that album's Stick In A Five And Go and Kebab Spider really got the party started.

Stick In A Five And Go is a bass heavy tale of revenge fantasies, buying a Royal Mail uniform, and having a good mate at the DVLA and it showcases all that is great about Sleaford Mods. The imagined exchange between Williamson and his foe ("I've got a big package for ya, you need to sign for it, Mr. Trees. It's massive, so can you come outside? You need to sign for it, mate") uses our hero's East Midlands accent to perfectly capture the band's eloquent handling of toxic masculinity, righteous anger, and surreal humour.

Kebab Spider is a woozy, abstracted funk detour into the dark workings of Williamson's mind. It's all "bingo punks", "shoeshine boys for fakers", and "flag tits" and has pretty much everyone in Sub 89 joining in with "you're just saying it all to look good". As ever, Williamson and Fearn are as adept at skewering heritage rock acts as they are corrupt politicians and the general uneasy sense of anger and ennui that seems to permeate the very soul of Britain these days.

TCR, BHS, Jobseeker, Mr Jolly Fucker, and Tied Up In Nottz (with a z you cunt) are, of course, as excellent as ever. These songs are now firm live favourites and despite the fact we've heard them many times before we still hang on to Williamson's every word and every minor key change that Fearn 'inflicts' upon us. By mid-set, we are their eager quarry.

 

But credit too for lesser known tracks like Bang Someone Out which sees Jason Williamson making weird raspberry noises and singing (yes, singing) about Donkey Kong, dirty tea bags, and the amorality of fitness for work assessments ("it's fit for work if it can shit and stare"). Or OBCT, whose initials come from the line "passed Oliver Bonas in the Chelsea tractor" and, in that, we know exactly what sort of person Williamson's got in his sights this time around.

It also features some kind of kazoo sound and the line "you're getting dragged round by your sleeves" repeated as the song comes to a close. Which is ideal and not just because the bass sound on the song could be described as 'dragging' but because most of us are now being dragged round by our sleeves. Dragged round by a failing political system, dragged round by the unchecked power of social media, dragged round by YouTubers, dragged round by demagogues, dragged round by stump orators, and dragged round by myths of British (always meaning English) excellence and invincibility.

Sleaford Mods puncture the tyres of the bikes these pompous pricks ride round and throw a strawberry milkshake in the face of Britain's homegrown fascism but, at the same time, they look out at the idle rich, the conceited, and the political class that allowed us to get into this sorry state and find them to be equally culpable and equally worthy of bile.

Best of all they do it with humour, grace, and kicking tunes. As ever, Sleaford Mods proved to be one of the, possibly the, most important British band of our age. Working class anger refracted through the broken lens of the experience of living in the UK in 2019 to reflect a country where the people who sleep in piss stained alley ways are far more worthy of our love and protection than those that hold high office. The nation may be fucked but, so far, they can't take our music from us.

Thanks to my fellow gig attendees:- Vicki, Nick, Shep, Darren, Tracy, and Ben (especially Ben as he got the tickets in and put me up in a caravan in his drive after the gig (and got me trolleyed)), thanks to Sleaford Mods for restoring/keeping my faith in music, and thanks to Bugsy for being one of the main people that helped me and joined me and inspired me on the marvellous musical journey that eventually brought me to this gig - and for everything else. Gonna miss going to gigs with my friend!