Sleaford Mods - English Tapas

The Guardian 80

The speed at which they work makes Sleaford Mods’ albums feel more topical than almost any other band’s – and their first post-referendum album finds them on typically furious, funny form

In theory at least, Sleaford Mods’ moment should already have passed. Fairly or not, artists with a wilfully stark musical blueprint tend to be subject to diminishing returns pretty quickly, and few artists around at the moment have as stark a sound as Sleaford Mods. Virtually everyone must have the general idea by now. English Tapas, their ninth album, certainly tweaks the design here and there. There are bursts of dubby echo on Messy Anywhere, backwards tapes and ghostly ambience on Time Sounds and a dancehallesque slant to the beat of Cuddly, while frontman Jason Williamson displays a willingness to sing – in a vibrato-heavy, John Lydonesque keen – far more often than before, matched by the appearance of melodies, something in fairly short supply on previous Sleaford Mods albums. But no one is likely to hear English Tapas and be baffled as to who it’s by: it’s still centred around simple basslines atop pummeling rhythm tracks and Williamson’s furious, expletive-laden bark.

In fact, this deliberately limited sonic palette might be the very thing that makes the duo still seem vital, long after the novelty should have worn off. Without wishing to diminish the effort that goes into making their albums, they clearly work relatively quickly; they’re also prolific. This keeps their music mobile, responsive and topical, a throwback to that brief period in the early 80s – before two year album-tour cycles introduced a degree of sclerosis into rock and pop – when certain songs in the charts appeared to comment on the news as it happened: Stand Down Margaret, Ghost Town, Between the Wars. So English Tapas prickles with a different set of anxieties than, say, 2014’s Divide and Exit, or its 2015 successor, Key Markets. It takes a few tracks for the topic of Brexit to appear – initially, the album seems more concerned with Williamson’s understandably complex response to the band’s commercial success and high media profile – but when it does, it provokes a bracingly volcanic torrent of fury. “Like scared kids, like scared kids, because that’s all you are, rubbing up to the crown and the flag and the notion of who we are – fuck off,” he snaps on Snout.

The Guardian 80

(Rough Trade)

Related: Sleaford Mods’ guide to modern Britain: ‘There is lots of pain’

There are glimmers of musical progression on Sleaford Mods’ ninth album: Jason Williamson sings the odd line, and there are even occasional choruses. But, pleasingly, for the most part it’s business as usual, which means Williamson venting his anger at everything from neoliberalism to the NME website, atop Andrew Fearn’s rudimentary beats. Given the social-chronicling nature of Williamson’s rants, it’s perhaps inevitable that Brexit looms large, whether explicitly on the standout Dull (“all the oldies vote for death”), or more obliquely, as on the bleak imagery of BHS. Almost as engaging are his colourful character sketches, most notably the repellent fitness instructor on opener Army Nights.

Pitchfork 79

English cuisine is hardly the horror show that it was in the 1970s—the British Isles are no longer a Michelin Star free zone—but the title of Sleaford Mods’ new album still raises a smile of recognition. For ENGLiSH TAPAS, they’ve upsized from Nottingham imprint Harbinger Sound to one of the most storied independent labels in history, Rough Trade. But vocalist Jason Williamson and producer Andrew Fearn still keep their gaze fixed in the direction of the discount aisle, bards of a Great Britain that is not in fact great, but sloppy, shallow, self-important, and wholly lacking in taste.

When Sleaford Mods broke out around 2013, Britain was in the grip of austerity, an economic philosophy applied by the Conservative-led government that seemed to inform both the duo’s downtrodden lyrical content and the pared-back clatter of their music. Those days, though, feel insipid compared to 2017’s geopolitical realities, this slow mudslide into state-sanctioned cruelty and small-minded authoritarianism. ENGLiSH TAPAS contains a few fleeting references to the state we are in, like nods to Brexit in “Cuddly” and “Dull.” A breathless rockabilly lurch, titled “Carlton Touts,” finds Williamson mock-mourning the dislodged elites that his lyrics once vilified: “Bring back the neolibs, I’m sorry/I didn’t fucking mean to pray for anarch-eh!” But it would be an overstatement to call this Sleaford Mods’ Brexit LP. Instead, ENGLiSH TAPAS mostly finds Williamson further honing the contours of his singular East Midlands vernacular, with special attention paid to the lifestyles of the tragic and washed-up modern male unable to meet even the low expectations that have been set for him.

“Army Nights” sets the tone, a bumptious opener sending up the special brand of idiocy that occurs in mess halls, stag dos, locker rooms—any place that men congregate without women. Elsewhere, Williamson returns over and over to the topic of alcohol and substance abuse—specifically, to the impulse to get out of one’s mind as a way of ignoring the misery of existence. “Messy Anywhere” is a lads-on-the-town chant that ironically undercuts itself at every stride. “Drayton Manored”—rhymed with “spannered,” meaning “extremely drunk”—is a lurid tale of home drinking, punctuated by the occasional taxi journey to restock, which Fearn mischievously illustrates with a supermarket checkout bleep. Williamson doesn’t hold back in his writing—quite the opposite. But he is never merciless, and his character sketches are shot through with a been-there wisdom, a sense of there-but-for-the-grace-of-God-go-I.

Williams is often typecast as a ranter, but ENGLiSH TAPAS is at least as funny as it is angry. Words erupt out of him with stray lines that stick: “Ya so dead in the head you got a job-facing life” (“Messy Anywhere”); “Car crash into the void of the Magna Carta” (“Snout”); “I had an organic chicken it was shit” (“Cuddly”). “Carlton Touts” boasts a chorus that somehow crams four good jokes into as many lines. But for all the humor, there is a palpable sense of desperation, a yawning emptiness that lies just beneath the surface. “Time Sands” muses on the drudgery of existence, the “quiet hell/Of cigarettes and trains and plastic and bad brains,” while “Dull” is utterly chilling, its dubby murk evoking cold English suffering as bleak as anything on PiL’s Metal Box.

Has success changed these perennial underdogs? A little, perhaps. “Just Like We Do” is one of the weaker tracks here, a swipe at experimental music snobs who hate the Mods just ‘cos they’re famous (although Williamson does have the grace to acknowledge that he “used to be one of ‘em”). But there remains an essential morality that runs throughout Sleaford Mods’ music, a reflexive siding with the oppressed. The album’s lead single “B.H.S.” addresses the disgraced tycoon Philip Green, who asset-stripped the department store he owned and fled to the Med leaving his staff without pensions. Williamson and Fearn conduct it as a jerky chicken dance, the sort of thing Pan’s People might have jigged around to on an old “Top of the Pops.”

Sleaford Mods remain literally unique. By turns, ENGLiSH TAPAS reminds you of acts as remote as Happy Mondays, Pet Shop Boys, and Crass, while never sounding anything like any of them. The closing “I Feel So Wrong” finds Williamson switching things up, his scattershot rant softening into a lightly weathered croon. It harkens back to some of the stylistic departures on 2015’s Key Markets—probably Sleaford Mods’ high watermark to date, a record that opened up a few avenues that remain unexplored here. Still, if ENGLiSH TAPAS at times veers towards formula, it’s at least Sleaford Mods’ own formula, and one that continues to serve them well.

Drowned In Sound 50

When they stumbled onto the scene with their first major release in 2013, Sleaford Mods were a breath of fresh, if phlegm-scented fresh air. Who would have thought the world needed a civil servant ranting over some computer bleeps and bloops? Austerity Dogs, Divide & Exit and 2016’s Key Markets firmly established the group as the gnarly leading lights of British punk rock. Their sound was familiar, yet fresh, and the aggression set them apart from a music scene hell-bent on pushing an escapist dream. With this in mind, their tenth record, English Tapas shouldn’t be anything other than truly exceptional. There’s more to be pissed off about now than ever, all they really have to do is just crank out more of the same, and everyone will be happy.

Well, you’d think so. However, right from the get go it’s apparent that the group’s act has got more than a bit stale. Opener, ‘Army Nights’ comes across as nothing more than some sort of poor Crass tribute. It’s all mardy snarls and lo-fi snare rattles, you know the drill by now. Saying that, there is a slight change in sound. Frontman Jason Williamson attempts to sing. That’s right, you read that right. Sing. It’s safe to say it doesn’t end particularly well.

The repetition wears thin early on. Unlike their other releases, there’s a real lack of memorable moments on English Tapas. While they’ve never been they types to pen a killer pop hook there has always been a tune or two hidden deep beneath the nihilism. ‘Moptop’ plods along with no real purpose and ‘Time Sands’ just sort of exists. While there is nothing particularly bad about any of these tracks the fact that they don’t provoke any sort of reaction proves that the group may have drained the repletion well…

With song titles like ‘Drayton Manored’ and ‘Carlton Touts’ Sleaford Mods are almost becoming a parody of themselves. Saying this, perversely it’s on these tracks that some light finally shines through. ‘Drayton Manored’ in particular hints at a more surreal sound. All of the classic Sleaford Mods ingredients are there, but somehow it all sounds a bit surreal, like they’ve been abducted by aliens, or The Residents.

Unfortunately, the plodding repetition soon rears its ugly head again, and stays for the duration. Finale ‘I Feel So Wrong’ signs of the record by taking us on a journey to nowhere, looping around and around inducing a migraine at the front of your furrowing brow, one piano stroke at a damn time.

English Tapas proves the seemingly unprovable. Mark E Smith might have been wrong about the whole repetition thing. Sure, it can be great. I guess it just depends what you’re repeating.