Sleaford Mods’ Starting XI
The fantasy team of artists who've meant the most to Jason Williamson throughout his life and career
Thirteen years after Jason Williamson met Andrew Fearn and the pair released Austerity Dogs as the first Sleaford Mods album to come from two people rather than one, labeling the Nottingham duo is still no fun. Punk, post-punk, electronic and spoken word help, but if you’re describing the band (are they a band?) to a friend you’re still better off in 2013, saying one guy makes these rudimentary, DIY beats that loop over and over, and another, very angry man swears about how shit everything is. How dismissive does that sound of everything that’s been groundbreaking about Sleaford Mods for more than a decade? But what a compliment; to still sound so fresh after all this time.
Others have been influenced by Sleaford Mods, but none are so bloody minded; the life force of a band whose radical, underground sound was born out of Williamson’s midlife desperation. Bands who swear as much as they do (so viciously and hilariously) have no business gaining any commercial success, and yet their last 3 albums all went top 10 without the help of any inauthentic career moves. Following their initial rejection of form, incremental growth has been key, as Fearn and Williamson have delighted in seeing how far they can stretch their minimalism, not just in sound – Fearn the sole producer of clunking bass lines and a muffled drum machine, Williamson the furious lyricist – but in stagecraft too, where the pair now headline festivals as if still in the backroom of a pub; two men and a laptop with an aversion to light shows and the usual branding. At this point, Sleaford Mods fans wouldn’t want it any other way.
Bands like Sleaford Mods also have little business recording at Abbey Road, and yet they did for their forthcoming album, The Demise of Planet X. It’s a stretch to call it their pop record – “I’ll shave your hair off and make you look like Ian Dunt, you c*nt,” goes one of Williamson’s typically childish threats, on ‘Shoving the Images’ – but I guess everything is relative. Fearn has finally passed on the engineering, and in turn his production has expanded beyond belief. Not everything smashes you over the head now; there’s Massive Attack’s ‘Teardrop’ in ‘Bad Santa’, ska, and a Northern Soul chirpiness to ‘Elitist G.O.A.T.’, which guest vocalist Aldous Harding turns into an indie pop swinger, sounding like Lauren Laverne on her ‘Don’t Falter’ star turn with Mint Royale. ‘Double Diamond’ even features cello.
Williamson has grown exponentially, too, as you may have noticed in his appearing on IDLES singer Joe Talbot’s podcast recently – for many years a man he has publicly berated, in song and interviews. But a lot has changed since Sleaford Mods’ last album in 2023, noted Williamson as we sat down to discuss his Starting XI. “There was so much to say [on The Demise of Planet X], the world had changed. Politically. Everything! In this country, in other countries, as we all know. I really wanted to say something about it but not make it off the cuff, like anger, like I’ve done on previous albums, because I don’t only feel that way. It needs to be a little more integral, a little wiser, and I do still want a bit of that anger there, because I do feel very angry.”
1. Aldous Harding
JW: I was in Tasmania at a festival in 2020, just before lockdown. We were headlining this little festival. So we went along and it was in the middle of this bizarre country, and there she was on stage, leering over an acoustic guitar, like a young John Lydon, almost. And I thought, who the fuck is this?! But she had this music that was very minimal. And a voice that was steeped in the past but also very contemporary sounding. And yeah, I watched it and was quite taken by it, and I sat there for the rest of the gig, and I never normally do that. Before I know it, I’m stood there and she’s behind me – again, just leering at me [laughs]. So I introduced myself, we got talking and shared a lift home that night back to the same hotel, and we’ve kept in touch. It’s an all-rounder relationship with Hannah – I really like her music and she’s a friend as well.
SS: Party and Designer, in particular, are two incredible albums.
JW: Completely, yes. I’ve got a lot more into Warm Chris. It took me a while with it. Not in a bad way, but sometime she just won’t let you in, and I think that was an example of that on that album.
2. Slo Burn
JW: Slo Burn was John Garcia from Kyuss, and he formed a new band straight after Kyuss split. It’s basically a continuation of that heavy stoner rock sound, that really they pioneered. All of them together, with Josh Homme [in Kyuss], from the late ‘80s were working on this sound, and it kind of got realised around ‘93, ‘94. Kyuss released 4 albums and then Slo Burn’s record Amusing the Amazing is a 4 track EP, and they never did anything else after that. There are a few live videos on YouTube, but they were fucking brilliant. I got into it because I met Josh Homme as a festival. We were playing just before them and they watched us. He came up to us afterwards and said, ‘I’m a big fan’, and I was like, ‘You’re fucking joking!’ And so I went into the old catalogue again. And then I remembered Slo Burn because we use to cane it in the clothes shop I used to work in back in the day. Amusing the Amazing is almost like a summary of what Kyuss had done over the last 5 years… If Josh was here he’d probably shout at me for saying that. I was talking to Geoff Barrow about it, and was saying, ‘yeah, we used to cover this Kyuss tune, ‘Green Machine’, back in the day with Beak>, but I found them too straight edged’, and he’s right, they are straight edged: it’s very traditional, their lyrics are very bluesy, ‘baby, woah, woah, woah’, but for me it really works. The naivety of that overcomes this traditionalism, I think.
3. Tubeway Army
JW: The first 2 tracks on Replicas really influenced me. And I remember Damon Albarn referencing them in the Parklife days of Blur, and me thinking then, oh, he’s onto something here. ‘Are ‘Friends’ Electric?’ and ‘Me! I Disconnect from You’, those opening 2 tunes are fucking brilliant. It really influenced the first album I did with Andrew, Austerity Dogs. I was trying to get these stabs in. Tracks like £5.60 had these Numan-esque stabs in it that I really wanted. Just kept playing that record around that period. When Gary Numan came out I wasn’t bothered. ‘Cars’ and all that. I thought he looked a bit crap, really. The Jam were reigning supreme around that period and I was still very much into the ideology of Paul Weller, so I wouldn’t listen to anything else.
4. David Bowie
JW: I was really late to David Bowie. Or was I? That’s almost apologising to the sycophants, isn’t it. Who won’t allow you in. David Bowie is like a nightclub that you can’t get into unless your wearing a particular thing. And if you talk to people about it, the mood changes and they become distant if you’re not coming up with the right things. It’s almost like a political party.
SS: So when did you get into him?
JW: Well, I was always aware of his working approach, after the honeymoon period of Ziggy Stardust etc., and how he would fall into these other characters, wanting to do something different. And Station to Station is the best example of that, for me. What the fuck is it!? You can hear the Happy Mondays in it; you can hear Motown; etc., etc.. But I liked the fact that he went in there and just wanted to do something that was different. It’s really hard to explain, but there’s so much in that album. And it was done over 3 weeks, wasn’t it, and I know he was on cocaine all the time, but even so… It reminded me of how I felt when it came to The Demise of Planet X. I wanted to add something further to it, but I didn’t know what that was. We had changed, I think, and everybody around us had changed because the world had changed, and I wanted to capture it. There was so much to say. Y’know, I saw the previous albums, and using that model, primarily as no good enough, so something else had to come along. I don’t know if that is correct or if my perception was somewhat jarred, but that’s why I leaned heavily into Station to Station, and also Low. And Scary Monsters. More so Scary Monsters in that his vocal is quite shit on it sometimes – he doesn’t even hit the notes; it’s like, that’s wicked. There’s that classic line of his, if you’re feeling uncomfortable you’re probably onto a good thing, and we certainly did feel uncomfortable at the start of the Demise sessions.
