NOTTINGHAM’s Sleaford Mods make their Limerick debut this weekend. Sleaford Mods are vocalist Jason Williamson and musician/programmer Andrew Fearn.
Andrew Fearn creates the backing track on his laptop while Williamson sings/ rages over the beat. The duo’s recent single ‘Tied Up in Nottz’ was in the shortlist for MOJO Magazine’s Tracks of the Year 2014, the album ‘Divide and Exit’ is on MOJO’s Album of 2014 list at number three, NME has the record at number nine.
Sleaford Mods stand very much apart from any other acts on the usual end of year polls you will see over the next few weeks. There is nobody out there quite like them but a very loose reference would see them somewhere between Dundalk’s Jinx Lennon, John Cooper Clarke and Carter USM or The Street’s Mike Skinner.
Sleaford Mods lyrics are starkly real world and they don’t hold back on tracks like ‘Job Seeker’, ‘Jolly F****r’ or ‘Tied Up in Nottz’, where Williamson gives his Tripadvisor review of one hotel on their recent no-budget tour of Germany,
“The smell of p*ss is so strong, It smells like decent bacon. Kevin’s getting footloose on the overspill Under the p*ss-station”
Any longtime fan of Kevin Shields or Thurston Moore will love the lyrics from ‘14 Day Court’: “Sonic Youth fan, MBV, if you like feedback that much get a job at the council.”
Both Williamson and Fearn are in their forties and have been in a succession of musical setups and mis-adventures in the past. After years in punk/ Britpop lineups Williamson’s eureka moment arrived when he performed his lyrics over a loop from a Roni Size record. “It worked, straight away. It was better than anything I’d ever done. That’s how Sleaford Mods was born,” he told The Guardian in a recent interview.
Expect two grown men, two cans of beer, a laptop and the best cutting sarcasm put to music in 2014 when Sleaford Mods play this Saturday December 6 at The Kasbah Social Club, Dock Road.
