In the Christian folk tale, Eve was fashioned from Adam’s superfluous rib. Sleaford Mods think we’re all spare ribs: canon fodder, expendable in the eyes of a government that responded too weakly, too late, to the pandemic. The ruling class, Jason Williamson suggests, perennially sacrifice the powerless to feed GDP.
If that’s the cheery take-home at the heart of Sleaford Mods’ sixth album, the east Midlands duo remain a joyous tonic, all funny, burbling noises, word association and banging tunes. Andrew Fearn’s deathlessly inventive compositions stare you down, defying you to find them simplistic – the title track’s turbo-charged electro, and the pointillist electronics of Top Room, are just two cases in point.
Williamson’s fugue state is every bit as eloquent on “the warm milkshake of nowhere” as he is on people standing “outside a high rise, trying to act like a gangsta” or getting Brexit “fucked by a horse’s penis”. Innovations are small but significant. Guests include the excellent Billy Nomates and Amy Taylor (Amyl & the Sniffers). Williams essays some quasi-folk hollering on The New Brick; elsewhere, his vocals are multitracked. Two songs – Mork n Mindy and Fishcakes – hark back to his childhood without an iota of nostalgia.
