“We’re like a fucking Aldi Gorillaz, aren’t we?” Sleaford Mods’ Jason Williamson deadpans to whynow when discussing the number of guests that appear on their new album, The Demise of Planet X. “It’s getting to the point now where Sleaford Mods is becoming bigger than just two people,” he continues. “At the same time, I’m conscious of trying to keep it stripped back.”
Ever since the profane street poetry and electronic pulses of 2013’s Austerity Dogs caught widespread attention, Nottingham duo Sleaford Mods have marched to the beat of their own drum (machine). Musically minimalistic, but with opinions the size of Bristol, Andrew Fearn and Jason Williamson are a throwback to the spirit of punkish iconoclasm, daring to do just whatever the feck they want, throwing verbal punches at any target seen fit.
Along the way, they’ve feuded with IDLES and Miles Kane (both now resolved), and even the Gallagher brothers have faced barbs from Williamson’s wayfaring tongue. Sitting down for a chat about his band’s impressive new record, conversation cannot help but turn to online culture, politics, cocaine and porn addiction, and notions of self-worth. Nothing is off the table. It makes for a wild ride.
The Demise of Planet X found the band decamping to Abbey Road Studios for the first time ever early last year to begin the writing and recording process. Williamson was in a “fucking state” the night before the first session. ”I was just so nervous, and quite panicky,” he confesses. “I couldn’t sleep. And that’s never happened [before].”
He puts the stress and insomnia down to the pressure of needing to do something special: “There was just so much to say. So much had happened. And I was determined not to do it in a cliched way.” What they committed to tape had to be right and had to stand up. “Fucking hard work, innit,” he quips.
Arriving three years after the critically acclaimed UK Grim, the new album constitutes the longest gap to date. The longer gestation – and associated toil – has paid dividends.
The record feels (and forgive us here, but hyperbole be damned) like a genuine gear change, thanks in part to the very Sleaford Mod-ian potpourri of guests, whose imprints broaden the palette, and continue a cameo trend that began with 2021’s Spare Ribs.
TDOPX opens with two of them. The rollicking lead single, ‘The Good Life’ is a breathless deep dive into Williamson’s conflicted psyche set to a propulsive electro thrum. The frontman’s inner dialogue is tossed around, traded brilliantly between West Midlands soul-punks Big Special, a fantastically unhinged Gwendoline Christie, and Williamson himself. It’s all very meta. Two years in the making, it was worth every agonising moment.
Elsewhere, tracks such as ‘Gina Was’ charts childhood trauma, the title track explores English misery through the metaphor of 80s film Shirley Valentine, and ‘Elitist G.O.A.T’ houses a downright delicious Aldous Harding vocal.
The latter is a highlight. Williamson’s trademark sprechgesang breaks bread with a surging bassline that’s not unlike Le Tigre’s ‘Deceptacon’ with the distortion taken off the heat. And then Harding arrives, her voice melting the music into something sweeter. Williamson is rightly proud of the results, declaring it to be almost ‘Stereolab-y’ thanks to Harding’s airy presence.
This year marks ten years since Williamson went sober. For a long time (dating all the way back to the late 90s), the frontman was swept up in addiction. Alcohol would lead to cocaine and that, in turn, would lead to porn. It was a dark, debilitating chain reaction, and one he’d repeat ad nauseum.
As time wore on, Williamson, who had married and become a father, was made aware of how a story like this usually ends. He checked into therapy. And he’s not looked back.
As for the ten-year milestone, it’s not something he’ll be celebrating. “It’s interesting that you bring up the word celebration, because I don’t celebrate anything,” he offers, before pausing to reflect on why.
“It’s not that I don’t deserve what I’ve done with Andrew, but I just don’t see it. I personally don’t think I deserve it.” He then remarks on how he believes people don’t take Sleaford Mods “seriously” and finds valuing what he devotes his life to hard to quantify.
“It’s hard for me to value it a lot of the time,” he concedes. “I know it sounds like first world problems, but it’s a real thing.” The wordsmith says he struggles to receive good feedback from people. “I just switch off. I think, in one way, that’s good. I’ve got my eye on the ball all the time. I just want to write tunes.
“[But] it would help [if I] enjoyed it a bit. I mean, I do to a certain degree, but I find [enjoying success] quite hard. Still do.”
Just prior to the publication of this feature, a clip of the duo tearing through ‘I Don’t Rate You’ from Spare Ribs was going viral on X. The footage was proving divisive – the titular refrain, ironically, offering strangers a platform to rate the merits of their music. Criticisms and defences, both voiced vociferously, were being hurled over Elon Musk’s site like pixellated hand grenades.
Our conversation predated this latest debate. However, online culture was still on Williamson’s mind when we talked thanks to the reaction they received to atmospheric new track ‘Bad Santa’ – a song that critiques the rise of the right and alpha male culture (and is another one of TDOPX’s standouts). “We got so much shit for it,” Williamson says, shaking his head. “Sometimes these conversations just feel hopeless.”
The intention was to discuss these trends in a “nuanced way”, he explains. An attempt lost on some listeners. “A lot of people were like, ‘you’re just crackheads. You’re this, you’re that. ‘You’re just lefties’,” he continues. “I’m not left-wing. We never have been.
“We probably veer more towards that kind of an ideology in some respects, and I certainly wouldn’t vote for right-wing policies.” It’s as though a ‘but’ is hanging ominously in the air, but Williamson doesn’t go there.
Instead, he locks back onto ‘Bad Santa’: “I was by no means accusing or pointing the finger at people thinking I’m better than anyone. I’m a bloke. I make mistakes myself.”
What becomes clear is that beneath the ballast and the chest-bursting bravura, Williamson is surprisingly reflective. Open about his demons, he seesaws between cocksure certainty and delicate vulnerability. It must make for a discombobulating day-to-day experience in Williamson’s skin, you gather.
The prickle returns when Sleaford Mods’ influence is discussed. The singer perceives a lack of dues have been paid by some of those in their debt. And he is furious about it. “There’s been one or two bands who have namechecked us, [but] the rest who are blatantly borrowing from the fucking formula have not said a word,” he snaps.
“Is it too obvious for them to namecheck us? Not really. Fucking namecheck us. You’ve built a career out of it.” Maybe wisdom has crept in, because he does something rather unexpected: the culprits go nameless.
READ MORE: Sleaford Mods: ‘The working-class experience is too brutal for people. They don’t want to hear it’
Then again, across 13 electrifying tracks, the new album levels enough charges and in enough directions. If the world really is burning and we are headed towards some sort of societal dumpster, then Williamson is raging against the dying of the light, fuming, and spewing anger all the way. You wouldn’t want him, or the band, any other way.
That doesn’t stop the inner doubts that dog him, however.
“As much as I find that Sleaford Mods is still a viable entity, sometimes part of me is like, ‘Fucking hell, what are you doing?’” Williamson concludes. “You know, the self-doubt creeps in.”
He straightens up, locking eyes across the screen. “But I’m going to keep going,” he resolves, “because it’s all I know.”
Keep going, he should, because The Demise of Planet X signposts something much more than an Aldi Gorillaz. They are evolving into a grander, more effective, and better animal. As Sleaford Mods might well say themselves: ‘Price Match’ that, you fuckers.
Editors’ Picks
- Andrew Fearn
- electronic punk
- Jason Williamson
- Post-Punk
- Sleaford Mods
- The Demise of Planet X
- UK punk
1 Comment
Unfortunately, most of us feel compelled to self-medicate in some form or another (besides caffeine), albeit it’s more or less ‘under control’. And there are various forms of self-medicating, from the relatively mild to the dangerously extreme, that include non-intoxicant-consumption addictions: e.g. chronic shopping/shoplifting, gambling, sex, pornography, over-eating ….
If such self-medicating forms are anything like drug intoxication or substance addiction, it should follow that: the greater the induced euphoria or escape one attains from it, the more one wants to repeat the experience; and the more intolerable one finds their non-self-medicating reality, the more pleasurable that escape will likely be perceived. In other words: the greater one’s mental pain or trauma while not self-medicating, the greater the need for escape from one’s reality — all the more addictive the euphoric escape-form will likely be.
The vast majority of obese people who considerably over-eat likely do so to mask mental pain or even PTSD symptoms. I utilized that method myself during much of my pre-teen years, and even later in life after ceasing my (ab)use of cannabis or alcohol. I don’t take it lightly, but it’s possible that someday I could instead return to over-eating.
… As for porn, I wouldn’t know anything about that. Except for maybe the Big’uns magazines a friend accidently left at my house.