Sleaford Mods
28th February 2020
Powerstation, Auckland, New Zealand.
Review by Todd Dealer. Photography by Chontalle Musson.
Having spent the last year touring their most recent album Eton Alive and playing sets that leaned quite heavily on that material, I’d wondered how Sleaford Mods would approach last night’s sold out show as they journeyed into new territories – the new album ‘All That Glue‘ due out this May.
Launching out of the blocks with a triple play of older tracks (‘Committee’, ‘McFlurry’ and ‘Fizzy’), Sleaford Mods stated their intention early on to give us their classics and it was pretty clear nobody would be going home unsatiated – certainly not the excited guy over my shoulder who shouted a word perfect McFlurry into my ear. There’s something about Sleaford Mods in a live setting that does make you want to yell along though – a task certainly made easier by plenty of the choruses consisting of the song title shouted repeatedly. In fact, the whole show had a jubilant feeling, you had a sense of being involved in the rather than it being a purely reverential spectacle.
For the uninitiated it’s always been easy to make lazy characterisations of vocalist Jason Williamson as an angry, shouty, sweary English yob but he’s an intriguing character. Alongside the careful hair and a penchant for quality footwear he’s an astute, often hilarious commenter on English society, or the parts of it he sees in front of him at least. Acerbic, political, railing away about junior managers he’s worked under and various other idiots that enable an unjust society, he’s at his finest when he just lets fly with his seemingly unedited internal monologue. The word count is astonishing in places. He’s not a one trick rick though, for every ‘TCR’ or ‘Jobseeker’ (probably their finest moment) there’s a ‘Tarantula Deadly Cargo’ with it’s poetic structure and careful wordplay… about terrible farts on tour.
Live, he’s a classic frontman, owning the stage with an inimitable energetic style. His intense vocal delivery is complimented with an array of physical flicks, ticks, head slaps, endearingly camp footwork and a decent amount of Jagger type strutting about the stage. It’s simultaneously amusing and transfixing. Next to him, Andrew Fearn pretty much hit play on his laptop, stood back, bobbed his head and grinned a lot. That’s not to underplay his role tho… as personalities they seem to be chalk & cheese but they present a united front, coming across like a squat party Pet Shop Boys. Despite Williamson’s eye-catching stage presence, there’s no doubt that Fearn’s music is an equally integral part of what defines them.
While 2017’s English Tapas album nicely consolidated everything they’d been about for the previous decade, Eton Alive’s release highlighted the slow evolvement in their sound that’s been happening since they found a wider audience. They’ll never be cured of being themselves so there’s no drastic change of direction, but the grubby bass guitar loops are slowly being replaced by computer generated ones and the clipped beats are quietly becoming more sophisticated. It’s clearly working for them though as there was a noticeable crowd surge when they dropped the excellent ‘Kebab Spider’ in the middle of the set, and a similar response to ‘Discourse’ and ‘O.B.C.T’ later on.
Like pretty much everything about the band, this show was a mass of contradictions – he’s angry but he’s endearing, it’s aggressive but at the same time it’s uplifting, it’s minimal while there’s a lot going on. ‘Moptop’, ‘BHS’, ‘Tied up in Nottz’, ‘Jolly Fucker’, a couple of new ones… the whole performance was, dare I say it… fizzy.
They closed out with ‘Tweet Tweet Tweet’ and that was it. No encore. No messing about. Job done. Did they surprise us? Well no, they were exactly what we all thought they’d be. Did they give us what we wanted? Abso-fookin-lutely.
Were you there at the Powerstation for this electro-punk throwdown, or have you seen Sleaford Mods perform live some other time? Tell us about it in the comments below!
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Yes I was there and it was bloomin good. They are very likeable while doling out some vitriolic truths. I saw them at Glastonbury in 2017 (?) Park Stage and they do seem to be refining what they do, enhancing it and losing none of the meaning and emotion. Best band I’ve seen in a while.