Sleaford Mods - Eton Alive

The Quietus

I often hear Sleaford Mods derided as a geezer group. They are painted as the new Pied Pipers of post post punk for the league of baldheaded men to follow now that Mark E Smith is in the ground. They are typified as being all lager, rage and old politics. This seems to be doing our oddest pop group a disservice, and arguably plays to the way in which the current discourse around gender often seems to lump all masculinity together in a big old bin, labelling it for disposal at the nearest toxic dump. Instead, it's always struck me that part of the reason such an unlikely duo have managed to achieve their success with fairly abrasive music is because within them there's much for the myriad of identities that make up the British male to grasp onto. I often wonder if this has a lot to do with Sleaford Mods being made up of Jason Williamson, a straight man married with two kids, and Andrew Fearn, who lives with his boyfriend on a boat. British masculinity is often much more complicated, and certainly more queer, than some would like to think - just look at the way the heads of these two musicians are touching, almost tenderly, on the sleeve. Eton Alive, then, is a sarcastic repost to those who sort and dismiss whole sectors of the populace, as Jason Williamson has it in 'Policy Cream', "So stupid aren't we, liked pumped up meat, wet and fried and thick to the slice."

Sleaford Mods' eleventh album is a remarkable leap on from 2017's English Tapas, a record of consolidation that addressed the strange situation that the duo found themselves in - going from a niche concern more accustomed to playing alongside noise artists suddenly given column inches and selling out massive venues. This progress has come hand in hand with a keener knack for more fully developed tunes to bolster Williamson's hectoring. (Listen to the way the melody fluffs its feathers like a randy pigeon in the weird chorus to 'Kebab Spider', or relish the juddering lo-fi hit of disco on 'Discourse'.) It is also, frequently, a hilarious record. The quavering of kazoo, lumbering bass and vocal leer of "big biiiiiiiird" on 'O.B.C.T' is one of the most joyously bonkers sonic combinations you'll hear all year.

The cleverness of the sound design is important too. Recordings of shop door beepers and car horns fix the record, its stories and characters, in the present day. The backing tracks Fearn has developed across Eaton Alive are superbly rich and dynamic, and they have become a tougher and more solid bedrock for Williamson's evolving vocal. Where some singers hitting their middle years try desperately to cling to the youthful voice that made them (and end up sounding like a recently shot walrus in the process), Williamson - coming to public awareness later in life - seems to enjoy real freedom, and ever growing confidence. It's fair to say that he seems to be following a similar trajectory that John Lydon followed, from The Sex Pistols into PiL, in terms of vocal technique at least. His voice conjures up distinct, odd personalities in which can be heard many aspects of a multi-faceted masculinity. 'When You Come Up To Me' is a case in point. The song could have been sold to a much younger soul singer but is crooned by Williamson in a way that suggests someone much older than his 48 years.

And then just listen to the lyrics on 'Discourse', which I think ought to be set out as they would be a poem, such is the air of tenderness I get from them:

And there is plenty more where that came from. Back in 2014, I praised Divide And Exit for being "as fine a document of the time they're painted in as a Hogarth, Gillray, or Mass Observation report". I must admit that initially Eton Alive as a title might point towards more of the same, but instead it's great to hear more intimate territories coming to the fore. These complexities of self are approached with the sensitivity you can hear in tQ's new podcast conversation between Williamson and our John Doran, here in 'Negative Script' ("I don’t wanna flip the page / Of my negative script / That cornered my young age / And ran away with it"), or 'Subtraction', which seems to deal with how anxiety can conjure up impossibly horrific thoughts when you're supposed to be having, simply enough, a nice time.

In Eton Alive we hear one of the finest political lyricists of the time turning inwards as he still follows a rich and empathetic way, dealing with highly relatable issues around the terrible behaviour patterns that are imposed on men by the patriarchy as much as they are on anyone else. This is exactly the sort of conversation that we need to hear men having in this day and age as we work on reconfiguring what masculinity is and can be. As Williamson has it, once again in 'Negative Script', "it's hard work being kind".

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The Guardian 80

(Extreme Eating)
Always recognisable and always evolving, Andrew Fearn and Jason Williamson’s barked social snapshots turn melodic

Sleaford Mods’ frontman Jason Williamson recently revealed that lately he’s been listening to Alexander O’Neal, Chaka Khan and Luther Vandross, although the Nottinghamshire duo haven’t suddenly gone soul or R&B.

However, Andrew Fearn’s backing tracks are forever evolving and are a fair distance from 2013’s breakthrough, Austerity Dogs. The terrific Kebab Spiders is powered by two alternate basslines: one sounds like the sort of thing the great James Jamerson used to lay down for Motown and the other is clubbier, almost Belgian new beat. The brooding OBCT could be Depeche Mode or the Cure, until Williamson comes in and it includes, of all things, a kazoo solo. The highly melodic When You Come Up to Me, meanwhile, would be a lost 80s new romantic synth ballad were it delivered in any other voice. As ever, though, it’s Williamson’s trademark bark – a caustic, observant, irritant, unforgiving mix of John Cooper Clarke and Mark E Smith – which renders the Mods instantly recognisable. They are increasingly, as John Peel said of the Fall: “Always different, always the same.”

Related: 'Life is chaotic!' Sleaford Mods' Jason Williamson answers your questions

The Guardian 80

(Extreme Eating)

That Sleaford Mods’ three most recent albums have resonated so widely, despite being so at odds with any of their peers, is largely down to the focused ire of Jason Williamson’s lyrics, a winning mix of stream-of-consciousness bile and absurdist humour. The anger is still prominent on the Nottingham duo’s first album on their own label, but it’s now tempered by a greater sense of resignation, most notably on those songs where he drops his regular sprechgesang in favour of actual singing, as on the lyrically vulnerable Firewall (“You don’t know you’re crying at all/ Because of your firewall”) and When You Come Up to Me.

While the album title might suggest a focus on the Old Etonian architects of austerity, Eton Alive is very much small-p political.Indeed, a passing reference aside (“Graham Coxon looks like a leftwing Boris Johnson”), David Cameron et al don’t get a look-in here, although the consequences of their actions are detailed in forensic detail. Policy Cream paints a bleak picture of a society in decline, with its admission that “we’re like pumped-up meat, wet and fried and thick”; Into the Payzone skewers the impersonal nature of contemporary consumerism. Andrew Fearn’s soundscapes, meanwhile, improve with each album. Particularly potent is the ominous post-punk bassline he deploys on OBCT; even what sounds suspiciously like a kazoo solo towards the end can’t puncture its sense of menace.