“Well,” says Big Special drummer Callum Moloney about three songs into their set, “this is the biggest gig we’ve ever played”.
Moloney is one half of the Black Country duo. Meeting at college, the pair have been involved in music all their lives but I’m willing to bet that they’ve found a home in this band.
Two guys, drums and samples, and working-class lyrics, it’d be easy to see Big Special as the Midlands answer to Bob Vylan, but no, that’d be lazy.
Joe Hicklin’s voice when he sings, like on “This Here Ain’t Water” is excellent, really primal blues, while the superb “Desperate Breakfast” takes things into a post-punk early The Cult type area.
As on all the gigs, there’s a Sign Language interpreter, and she has her work cut out with the quickfire rap of “Shithouse”. The next single “Trees” sees Moloney get up close and personal with the crowd and “Hope” is typical of what they do. Melody, part rap, part sung and wholly original. With the rest of this tour to go and a host of their own shows booked, 2024 could be both big and, well special for the band.
There are people that tell me that punk rock needs guitars. It doesn’t, any more than it needs a born-again Tory who sold us butter to survive (hi John).
And if there is any doubt remaining about whether Sleaford Mods are a punk band, then exhibit A for the defence is this. Watch Jason Williamson spit out the words “McFlurries”, “I got a Brit Award” and “No Surrender” when they do “McFlurry”. It is so full of hate, bile and contempt that it might be the most punk thing you’ll see.
And, basically, that’s the sort of vibe throughout the 90 minutes that Williamson and his musical partner Andrew Fern are on stage.
What Sleaford Mods do is totally unlike any other band. They don’t sing songs in the manner of any other band, and frankly too, they don’t sing songs from the same perspective as any other band either – which is why the criticism levelled at them by Bob Vylan and others recently for a perceived stance on Palestine was a) wrong and b) missed the point. What they do is document the lives, the anger and the fun, of the British working class
And no one does it better.
Recent album “UK Grim” sees nearly all of its tracks aired from the opener onwards, but they also delve back into earlier albums, with much from the sort of mid-period of their work, like “In Quiet Streets” and the superb “Giddy On The Ciggies”.
And that’s sort of the point with the Sleaford Mods, about halfway through they play “£5.60” from the early days and “Tilldipper” from this year, and of course there are sonic similarities, even though Fern (who is especially energetic this evening he’s got a bad back, he needs the exercise” smiles Williamson) wasn’t in the band, but isn’t that more a case that the problems that faced ordinary working-class people in the UK were the same then as now, largely thanks to Tory scum? And in their work for Shelter – which includes a version of “West End Girls” approved by the Pet Shop Boys, has done more than any politician to help the homeless.
They fire words at you at a million miles an hour for an hour and a half (and my goodness, the hardest working person here is doing the sign language) but things like “DIWhy” are so incredibly original that they cannot be ignored.
That even extends to the way they deliver the songs. Not just Fern’s dancing, but Williamson drying himself on his fan, using his words as communication, without real engagement with the crowd, yet still able to engender moshpits. This is an astonishing band and a unique gig.
The only real concession to normality is to play the most loved songs at the end. “Tied Up In Nottz” is not one for the Nottingham Tourist Board, “Jobseeker” is utterly sensational, still, and “Tweet Tweet Tweet” and the condemnation of the social media reliance in the modern world is perhaps even more relevant given recent events.
At one point tonight- after “Mcflurry” as it happens – Williamson rails against “you pretentious pricks”. It doesn’t matter who “you” are, “you” are not “us” and when it comes to Sleaford Mods, that’s all that’s ever mattered. Which, when you think about it, I’d pretty punk rock.
