Modern music's greatest shame is that politics and popularity so rarely mix. It's easier to find a proud Brazilian than an ambitious new band who haven't been media-trained to deny all knowledge of current affairs, while those with something to say tend to confine themselves to the unwelcoming leftfield. Take Sleaford Mods, two fortysomething Nottingham bruisers currently swarmed with hype around recent albums Austerity Dogs and Divide and Exit, and boasting a very sweary line in social commentary. Their live show, in a packed and sweltering Lexington, feels like being harangued by a drunk on an overcrowded tube, or the Streets trying to start a pub fight.
The Mods are upfront to the point of karaoke. Beat dealer Andrew Fearn doesn't even pretend to do anything other than press play on his compulsive, arcade-dub backing tracks and then stand around swigging beer, while shouter Jason Williamson rants his effed-and-blinded street poetry about Nottingham estate life, part-Mark E Smith, part-Ian Dury, part- very angry Super Hans. Clearly a man beaten into a desperate savagery by decades of bad drugs, cheap lagers, underpaid wage slavery and political exploitation, his impassioned tirades are crushed tinnies hurled at the establishment with as much humour as bile. When he isn't attacking random pop-culture targets from Jamie Hince to Tiswas, listing the alcohol content of various ciders, reciting entire Restart interviews on Jobseeker or yelling "I got a Brit award, I got a shit award!", he's firing off blurred Snapchats full of insightful invective about Con-Dem'd Britain: "The wage don't fit!" he spits.
With most songs ending with a "Fuck off!" or a deeply rebellious raspberry, it all smacks as much of a gratuitously offensive Shoreditch art band from 2004 or a pissed Parklife, as it does a post-garage PiL or the Fall. You leave wondering if you've witnessed a speed-fuelled open-mike novelty, or the torches being lit on the revolution. Still, Stewart Lee's here, so it must be brilliant.
• At Beacons festival, Skipton, on 7 August. Details: greetingsfrombeacons.com
