The polemical Jason Williamson and dexterous producer Andrew Fearn kick against the pricks with unrivalled bite, railing against hypocrisy, inequality and apathy with their inimitable, scabrous sense of humour.
Spare Ribs, the astonishing sixth album from Sleaford Mods, featuring Amy Taylor of Melbourne punks Amyl and the Sniffers and the British newcomer Billy Nomates, finds the duo charged with ire at the UK Government’s sense of entitlement, epitomized by its devil-may-care approach to the coronavirus crisis.
Recorded in lockdown in a furious three-week studio blitz at JT Soar in July; the album kicks off with their first-ever ‘intro’ track, the experimental ‘A New Brick’, which sees Jason adopt the persona of, as he describes it, a “circus master”, acknowledging with ironic jolliness, “We’re all so Tory tired / And beaten by minds small.” There is, he insists, no reason to feign optimism about 10 years of the Tories: “The only way you can wage war against them by explaining it in an intelligent manner, and not feeling intimidated at coming across as being negative.”