The latest album from the Nottingham duo could be tighter, but shows them at their most ferocious, inventive and brilliantly anarchic writes editor Alex Thompson
Last year I saw Sleaford Mods play a small venue in York. One man and a mic, another with a laptop and a pint. 150 punters. That was it. Despite the relatively small audience and simplicity of the setup, this was one of my favourite gigs of 2019, the Nottingham duo bringing a sound and energy bigger than bands twice their size. The anarchic energy, fury and wry sense of humour that made that gig so fucking great is the driving force behind their latest work ‘All That Glue’, a collection of rarities, b-sides and previously released and unreleased tracks from the past 5 years.
From the driving bassline and pounding kicks of ‘McFlurry’, the listener is immediately thrown into the signature sound and style of Sleaford Mods. The vocals of frontman Jason Williamson are as dry, monotone and biting as you’d expect, lyrics packing bleak vignettes of pissing in toilets alongside the refrain “I’ve got a BRIT award”. It feels like a track off earlier works such as 2014’s Divide And Exit, brilliantly simply and with a dry sense of humour.
This momentum is carried on with tracks such as the rough and raw sound of ‘Fizzy’, aggressive politics and social conscience of ‘Rich List’ and unrelenting bass loop of the remastered ‘Jolly Fucker’. The cult classic ‘Tied Up In Nottz’ also gets a remastering, the production crisper and more vicious than ever. Other high points from the album include the electrifying ‘Second’, a droll and driving track which makes up for its simplicity with some biting vocals and punchy production.
Lyrics capture mundanities and frustrations of British life in a way that no other band seems to match, references and observations humorously mixed to create some laugh-out-loud lines. Whether it’s rundown highstreets, pub racists or jobcentre angst, Williamson deploys barbed and scathing depictions of modern Britain.
The fan favourite ‘jobseeker’ also finds its way onto the tracklist, Williamson waxing lyrical about life on the dole with his trademark acerbic wit and bleak humour. The instrumental kicks and pounds, production is brilliantly scuzzy and the vocal delivery is quintessentially Sleaford Mods. This is my favourite track from the band and I’m glad to see it finally make its way onto a studio album.
There’s some hangovers from previous albums that also make the cut. Some of the bands biggest tracks, ‘TCR’, ‘BHS’ and ‘O.B.C.T’ all appear, although it’s unclear on first listening whether they are any different to the versions which appeared on previous albums. Still, they are great tracks and serve as a contrast to the rougher, rawer unreleased tracks.
A couple of these tracks like ‘Blog Maggot’, ‘Slow One’s Bothered’ and ‘Tarantula Deadly Cargo’ feel slightly out of their depth when placed alongside some of the bands strongest work, they’re not bad songs by any stretch but they don’t feel quite right sitting in between fast paced, aggressive and brutishly simple tracks like ‘Jolly Fucker’ or ‘Job Seeker'.
This serves to contribute to the album’s biggest drawback - it’s length.
This is a long album. At a towering 22 tracks and coming in at an hour and change, it’s the densest and longest of the band’s work to date. Consistency occasionally wavers as you progress through the album, as the fresh and punchy tracks of the album’s opening become saturated with messier cuts and material we've already heard. While thankfully most of the tracks feel like they earn their spot, there are a few which could be cut and the album would be slightly tighter as a result of this. But that’s not what this album is.
And who am I to disagree with Sleaford Mods?
7/10
Alex Thompson
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