2021 should be a victory lap for Sleaford Mods. In the two years since releasing Eton Alive — their first album on their newly minted label, Extreme Eating — you could sense a turning point in their career as they are now no-longer the “only band that matters”, for some, but you could begin to spot their influence amongst the soup-of-the-week post-punk bands cropping up with every blink of an eye in the UK. Being forced to take last year off, the duo — vocalist Jason Williamson and multi-instrumentalist Andrew Fearn — released a career retrospective, All That Glue, and returned this year ready to go with Spare Ribs.
A sign of a maturity in lyricism can usually be seen overtime when an artist strengthens their point of attack instead of surrounding the listener with unnecessary lines that detract from the argument. Williamson may be the exception to the rule. With his barked out spoken word poetry, he has taken shots at worthless bosses, indefensible politicians, and the out-of-touch Britpop elite until they had no more piss left to take.
There was a noticeable shift, however, with 2017’s Key Markets where Williamson decided to get a little more tuneful, choosing to sing more than fling rapid fire expletives like an auctioneer reading Bukowski. This time around, he has figured out how to split the difference in a way that makes this record his best vocal performance without losing one drop of his vitriol for the state of the world.
And, oh, does Williamson have a lot to work with on Spare Ribs.
With the future of the UK in flux as it nears Brexit and the entire globe on lockdown, there is no shortage of inspiration for Williamson. Whether he’s wanting to level with racist guy drinking by the shop that foreigners aren’t the cause of the world’s current predicament (“Out There”) or generally being “Tory Tired” (“The New Brick”) there are still plenty of targets left and he nails them all with bravado and efficiency.
You run the risk of missing the point whenever you try to dissect Fearn’s minimalist beats. Compared to the world-builders of the day like Flying Lotus or Oneohtrix Point Never, hearing a Mods record is like popping in Rockets to Russia after a steady diet of 2112. He only keeps the essentials in his tool kit: a steady beat and the slightest amount of color to not distract away from Williamson’s dog-off-his-leash indictments. But on Spare Ribs, some of the tracks sound downright lush in their construction. Songs like “Out There” and the album closer “Fischcakes” provide more atmosphere and depth than anything they have attempted.
One thing that sticks out this time around is that Fearn is using more electric guitars. While he used to include wire leads every once in a while, for songs like title track and “Thick Ear” he accentuates choruses with strummed out distorted chords that creates the fantasy that the Mods could one day make an honest-to-god punk record. The idea of Andrew nodding along to some of the songs on stage with his laptop resting on a Marshall stack instead of a crate only makes me look forward to seeing these guys rip it up live when the world regains some sense of normalcy.
In a left turn that should surprise most Mods fans, the album also contains two featured vocalists — Amyl and The Sniffers’ Amy Taylor and Billy Nomates (on “Nudge It” and “Mork n Mindy”, respectively). Both artists share similarities to Williamson’s delivery, and their presences on the album go to show how revolutionary the Mods have been on the post-punk scene since their breakthrough, Divide and Exit. In many ways, Spare Ribs is what Sleaford Mods have been working towards all of these years. As a band of two close friends, they have remained impervious to any sort of dividing tactics that society could throw their way. And with the pandemic showing no signs of letting up, they prove that they are still the band of this moment.
Essential Tracks: “Out There,” “Mork n Mindy” and “Thick Ear”
Prerequisites: Sleaford Mods’ Divide and Exit and John Cooper Clarke’s Snap, Crackle, & Bop