A bracing breath of foul air from the rumbling guts of the East Midlands music scene, Sleaford Mods have graduated from obscure cult act to metropolitan media darlings over the past 12 months. This minimalist two-man outfit is largely a vehicle for Jason Williamson, a former benefits adviser for Nottingham city council with a twisted genius for shouty, sweary, surreal, scatological spoken-word rants about the grotty state of austerity-age Britain, mostly viewed through the jaundiced eyes of a provincial underclass outsider.
Looking and sounding like escapees from a Shane Meadows film, the Nottingham-based duo began their latest nationwide tour close to home in Derby. Standing sideways on to the audience, Williamson barked and belched his bilious tirades into the microphone, each punctuated by frequent four-letter asides and jerky arm movements. As ever, his musical partner Andrew Fearn had little to do besides trigger pre-recorded backing tracks composed of rudimentary drum loops, basslines and breakbeats.
Tapping into a lineage stretching from the prole-punk primitivism of the Fall to mouthy quasi-rappers such as Shaun Ryder and the Streets frontman Mike Skinner, Williamson came across as a witty and spiky social commentator. He excoriated dead-end dole culture in Jobseeker, druggy urban life in Tied up in Nottz and overpraised music icons in Pubic Hair Ltd. But the targets of his apparently inexhaustible rage soon began to feel a little random: breakfast cereal, ancient children’s television shows, David Cameron and smelly toilets all merited similar scattershot blasts of weapons-grade misanthropy. Johnny Rotten meets Victor Meldrew.
At their best, Sleaford Mods provide a refreshingly raw and belligerent alternative to bland contemporary pop. At worst, they pander to a contrived caricature of broken Britain designed to make authenticity-starved London media hipsters salivate. Either way, this was an impressively intense performance, just a little lacking in focus and variety over the long haul.
Touring until November. Details: sleafordmods.com