Dorian Lynskey’s excellent book 33 Revolutions Per Minute, which catalogues the history of song as a medium for protest, finishes in 2005 with Green Day’s American Idiot.
Around the time it was first published in 2011 you might’ve been forgiven for wondering where the next firebrand was coming from; with the music industry’s new digital economics and the Conservative government’s widespread axing of youth grants as just two contributory factors, by then few could afford to be musicians full time.
This distinct silence whilst the nation was placated with Mumford & Sons’ bourgeois neckerchief phoniness was broken by a duo who came so far from left-field that they at first seemed to be some kind of novelty act. Sleaford Mods presented themselves as the massively unfiltered voice of mid-life full sleeves and late forties coke bumps too many, unofficial spokesmen for a generation that grew up between hoodied slackers on one side and pompous Cruel Britannia fantasists on the other.
Jason Williamson and Andrew Fearn understood anger and the performance of it, the former spittle flecking microphones whilst the latter cooked up uber-minimalist crap-hop beats and just pressed play. This compilation – described with typical lack of fuss as the pair’s ‘best bits, b-sides and unreleased fan favourites’ – covers a period in which they rose to prominence on an unlikely ticket, firing shots at the establishment, dead end jobs, self-righteousness and empty culture amongst many things, Williamson moving through various states from despair to apoplexy.
Beginning with material from roughly around the release of Austerity Dogs in 2013 they come bearing gifts, with earlier favourites Jobseeker, Jolly Fucker and Routine Dean available in one place for the first time, but the track selection is a little less random than it looks, showcasing both their progression from rant kings with a beat into that much hated ‘proper musician’ straitjacket – a tag to their credit they cheerily take at little more than face value.
If you came for the boiled piss of say Tied Up In Nottz, Rich List or Blog Maggot, you’ll stay for the trickery Fearn uses to prove there’s lots more to come; Fat Tax slinks around with a guitar loop which could almost be a wafer thin soul-horn, OBCT is synth pop done with a bleak sense of post industrialism (and what sounds like a kazoo), while When You Come Up To Me, from last year’s release Eton Alive, is pretty convincing R&B.
Whether anyone buys a Sleaford Mods record to hear any of these things is a question Williamson and Fearn won’t care about the answer to for now. And whatever they want to be next year, next month or forever, All That Glue’s best bits are still uniquely them in familiar places; first the despairing post Brexit-anthem B.H.S., the second Tweet Tweet Tweet, a scathing stitch up on our inability to feel any more.
This isn’t the soundtrack to a revolution, but the men who brought back the protest song deserve an open top bus, not a firing squad.
