Review: Sleaford Mods, Bierkeller

There seems to be a lot of distrust and confusion among the more serious listener as to whether the Sleaford Mods are actually any good – in part perhaps because of all the music press hoo-haa they’ve been attracting of late. Well as much as we’d all like to think better, very occasionally those London hacks do get it right, and tonight we witnessed pretty much the only English band that actually matter in these troubling times.

The punters seemed to agree, as The Keller was packed to its dusty rafters on a muggy Autumn Sunday – and it was a pretty varied bunch too. Not merely the knowing beardy hipsters and woolly hatted beat captains that you’d expect, but a pretty broad church that included teenaged metalheads, middle-aged punks, and some pretty superannuated seniors in Dismaland t-shirts who were quietly getting their nod on in the cubbyholes at the sides.

Sheepishly sidling onto stage to a huge heroes’ roar, the East Midlands double team kicked straight into new album title track Key Markets, before bludgeoning their way through hit after hit after hit, the now rabidly bobbing crowd hanging on Williamson’s every spat syllable, chanting along with him, and shouting out the rude bits with especial aplomb. A band this seemingly niche shouldn’t ordinarily be this loved. I mean, how many of the punters in here tonight get even half of the references to seventies kids TV and regional superstores? But that doesn’t really matter, because even if they don’t understand the specifics they totally buy into the sentiment – that everyman exasperation that Williamson spews out with every stream of consciousness rant. 

With each new tune, the drinking man’s poet laureate shuffled his brown suede shoes anxiously, like a council house James Brown without a cape, all the while flicking his head repeatedly like a stir crazy zoo bear. Every now and then he’d catch himself falling into the standard rock’n’roll tropes, calling himself out on it in self-imposed disappointment. “I just found myself shouting ‘let’s ‘ave it’ between songs’”, he mumbled, “this is what success does for you – if you can call it success”.

The crowd erupted roughly midway through for Jolly Fucker and from there on in got more and more bouncy. Somewhere down the front a little bloke in his sixties was in near religious reveries, while every last man and nan in the hall was nodding their heads in time with music maestro Andrew Fearn, jigging about at the back with beer in hand, grinning like a monkey whose premium bonds had come in. Two startled-looking middle-aged blokes you’d cross the bus to avoid shouldn’t be this compelling, but you just can’t keep your eyes off them for a single second. Nobody could here in this sweaty black box tonight. 

They polished the set off with the sublime Job Seeker, before a quick brace of encores – the downbeat Tarantula Deadly Cargo and the breakneck Tweet Tweet Tweet – the stomped off into the night. “No matter how many times we come here – we bloody loves ya!” Williamson barked, before he dropped his mic and ran. Come back soon, fella, we loves ya too.