Nottingham duo Sleaford Mods are back on the block with a new album, Eton Alive. Frontman Jason Williamson and Eleri Crossland discuss social media, street meats and spending quality time with the fans.
Your fifth album Eton Alive is definitely your most experimental so far – you even sort-of sing on some of the tracks! What influenced the overall sound of the album?
Time just develops your music really; you grow and your interests change. The music I was personally listening to changed, same with Andrew [Fearn, the other half of the group] as well. I got more into pop songs and r’n’b songs, so I wanted to try and bring across a more song-y element to it. So although the more upbeat songs don’t exactly sound like 80s r’n’b, they’ve definitely got flavours of it. You don’t want to repeat yourself and we don’t think we do. We don’t move on massively with each album, but we definitely do move on, so we wanted the more upbeat stuff to sound different and I think we’ve achieved that.
You say you’ve been listening to more pop and r’n’b – can you tell me what’s on your current playlist?
Well I listen to a lot of drill music, hip hop and, as I’ve said mid-80s soul and r’n‘b, like Luther Vandross and Chaka Khan. So quite varied, really. I’ve also been listening to a bit of Drake’s earlier stuff as well. I’ve been getting into a lot of that stuff and just seeing things I want to pocket, and thinking „I want a bit of that in it – why not?“
So this is the first Sleaford Mods album to be released on your own label, Extreme Eating. What made you part ways with Rough Trade?
Well I was told that we could do it independently and carry on the way we did before we went to Rough Trade, but what I didn’t realise was that we became bigger on Rough Trade, so we were gonna need that infrastructure in place if we were gonna carry this on. I wanna get bigger, you know, I don’t wanna get any smaller!
To be honest, it was a premature move and it’s been quite stressful getting an album campaign together. But we’ve got that in place now, so hopefully it won’t suffer too much. I think it might suffer commercially, because we got off to a bit of a slow start, so I don’t know how that’s gonna work, but who knows? I’m not saying we’ve learned a lot from that and, moving forward, we’ll think twice before rushing into an independent release without very much groundwork.
Talking about extreme eating, you’ve already released a single off the album titled Kebab Spider – is this a favourite teatime takeaway of yours?
I haven’t had a kebab for ages to be honest! We were talking about it the other day actually – it was a running joke on tour, the idea of finding a spider in your kebab, we thought it was quite funny. So I just put it in a song and fit a story around it about the commercial industry and being rejected by the commercial industry, because you wouldn’t agree to have your creativity processed in such a way. So the reality of that is obscurity, like the kebab spider crawling out of your cheap packet of street meat. It’s a bit of an absurd notion, a surrealist image, but it’s quite funny. Just the words ‘Kebab Spider’ were quite funny really.
I found the music video funny as well – did you just show up at a random club night and decide to film there?
Yeah, we found a club and just got a load of people from our fanclub to come down there, and they got to be in the video for a couple of pints each. I think we do have a good relationship with our fanbase. We always seem to keep in touch with people, so I like to think we’re not one of these distant, pretentious bands.
So you’re coming to Cardiff in April, where the local music scene has recently received bad news regarding the closure of small venues, notably Gwdihw and Buffalo. What’s your take on this?
I do think small venues are important, but it’s hard to keep them open in the current times, because a lot of people haven’t got enough money, so the social side of things has been stripped back. They’re important because they put bands on and they’re not biased, really – you find a lot of independent venues will just put anything on. That’s how we came up, through independent venues, because the major [Nottingham] venues like Rock City and Rescue Rooms just didn’t want to know.
Outside the band, you’re a published author [Williamson’s latest book Happy Days was released in October 2018] and also responsible for running a hilarious Twitter account (@fit_as_fuc). Would you say you’ve got a positive relationship with social media?
Yeah, I still use it. I guess I’m nearly 50 aren’t I, so I think people my age kind of think Twitter is still good, whereas young people are probably steering away from letting people know what they’re doing every five minutes. But it’s quite a good way to engage with people and you can build up a little community there.
Social media these days, a lot of it’s pretty dire. I spend six hours a day on my phone, which isn’t good and that does concern me to a certain degree. But, generally speaking, it’s always been a really good tool for the music.
In a tweet you made last month, you described Brexit as “bout as interesting as third division club finances” – how do you think the whole saga will end?
It’s not good, is it? I think it might be bad – no, I think it will be really bad. I’m not sure how it will affect me personally, but it’s gonna affect a lot of people job-wise. Regardless of whatever political advantages are likened to the Leave vote, I think it was done prematurely and a lot of people got a lot of wrong information about it and it’s just a mess. Who knows? Nobody really knows, do they?
I voted Remain, so I’d prefer a second referendum. I think we should have one, based on the fact that the information given to people who voted Leave, in a lot of respects, was false. So, on that basis, I’d like one, but I’m aware that other people wouldn’t.
Sleaford Mods, Y Plas, Cardiff University Students Union, Fri 5 Apr. Tickets: £19.50. Info: 029 2078 1458 / www.cardiffstudents.com