Amid a dearth of disaffected pop, Sleaford Mods have picked up the baton and sprinted with it. The Nottingham duo’s third cracker in three years finds producer Andrew Fearn’s insistent beats and basslines again providing the perfect vehicle for Jason Williamson’s furiously spluttered, sweary rhymes. His scattergun blunderbuss takes fire at anything and everything: his mates’ music taste (“Put the CD on. It’s fucking Shakin’ Stevens!”), Ed Miliband, Nick Clegg, Tory cuts, bad dope, Starbucks, woolly jumpers, Lauren Laverne, Blur (“even the drummer’s a fucking MP”), gangs in leather jackets (“motorbikes from the 50s. You live in Carlton, you twat”) to alienation itself (“no one’s bothered”). Inspiration comes from all angles and a 1977 TV movie provides a title for the barmily brilliant Tarantula Deadly Cargo, a tale of spider transportation that morphs into a surreal examination of human excrement (“European poos are deadlier. Freeze it … you can eat it”). Anger is still their foremost energy, but there is a much richer seam of humour than they like to let on.
