Edgy Sleaford Mods don’t do ‘nicey-nice’

The Groove Tube with Jimi McDonnell

Sleaford Mods, who play Róisín Dubh on Thursday, December 4, are an in-your-face fusion of punk and spoken word. Jason Williamson fires relentless observations of urban English life over Andrew Fearn’s no-frills drum, bass and guitar loops.  Jason is not shy with expletives and some may find his on-stage style confrontational.  Are people ever taken aback by Sleaford Mods?

“A lot of the time,” Jason says. “Offended by it, or people don’t like what I say. But we’re in an environment where everybody’s really nicey-nice to each other. It should change. Start telling people what you think, talk about the environment around you – which isn’t very good. None of that goes on, nobody’s saying anything.”

Earlier this year The Guardian ran a piece tipping Sleaford Mods for a prestigious Mercury Prize nomination. They missed out, but Jason wasn’t too bothered by not making the cut.

“That thing’s the kiss of death, innit?” he says, possibly referring to an act like Speech Debelle, whose career nose-dived after she won in 2009. “I think the board were just scrabbling for something, trying to make themselves look a bit edgier. Stuff like FKA Twigs is all very well, but it’s pretty much the same thing.  Not very inventive, the songs aren’t saying anything.

“The music speaks better than an award. An award’s not going to sell your records, the only thing that will is good songs.”

Sleaford Mods certainly have those. The sublime Liveable Shit latter contains this great line: ‘Like three months of rain, no one likes a Tory reign/The Prime Minister’s face hanging in the clouds like Gary Oldman’s Dracula.’

“That line came out of just walking down the street and you kind of connect things,” Jason says. “You start off with one subject, connect it with another, and just patchwork it like that. Most of it is entrenched in social observation. You can pretty much run free with that.”

Jason rails against the Tory government and a docile society on Divide And Exit. But he’s wary of the modern way to air discontent, as he shows with the lyric: ‘To disagree on social network sites is to kill the counterculture.’

For more, read this week’s Connacht Tribune.