Sleaford Mods
English Tapas

I find it difficult to write a review about this album because the restrictive policy of Rough Trade, which prevented me from uploading my turntable with the red vinyl edition of English Tapas, annoyed me.
I mean, nothing like when I uploaded a mash-up using Katy Perry's Fireworks and after three seconds the FBI was at my door.
Honestly, this stuff about "we're not on YouTube" is getting a bit old.

Premise: why should we care about the British vision of a duo of nutcases telling us about their England, their Brexit, their view on multiculturalism, their love-hate relationship with the success they've achieved, all in an incomprehensible dialectal English?

Once again, the charm under the Union Jack comes knocking and it's no coincidence that Andrew Fearn, the musician of the duo, proudly wears a t-shirt that reads "I Still Hate Thatcer."

That woman, for what she managed to create in the collective imagination of counter-culture, deserves a golden statue. To her and to the Queen.

English Tapas, in its structure, tells nothing new compared to previous works and the penultimate, acclaimed "Key Markets".
This duo of ruffians has hit the mark, and album after album, is creating a unanimous chorus of approval, in the cry of anti-hype that may seem a little neo-punk but is always mainstream.

For me, whether it's protest or peaceful idylls, rosary of good words, it's always— to quote Rino Gaetano— a matter of gross turnover and ranking rising: today on the Sleaford Mods store, mugs are 20% off.

And Malcom McLaren looks slyly from above, indeed.

Sure, there's a buzz of full concerts, the production of the album is more refined, a certain irony seeps through, and a use of "little sounds" that reminded me (just in this aspect) something of Devo.
At times, I might even claim that in Drayton Manored they've dissed the soul of David Bowie:

"A trip to Spar is like a trip to Mars."

Maybe it's just my paranoia, but it seems that Jason Williamson also mimics the voice of the Duke a bit or, maybe, it's just my fixation. Or perhaps he's begun trying to add some sung notes here and there.

But I'm curious, and it seems that someone has already pointed out a certain "mockery" of the duo towards the late Bowie. Then I read an interview with one of the Gallagher brothers who states: "There will never be another Bowie because now there are things like Sleaford Mods." The same admitted they couldn't stand Oasis: "They've never done anything for the youth and the working class; just songs for posh boys."

I don't like artists who tell me about life. I don't trust them anymore. I don't want the gospel of the righteous doctrine, not in art. I wasn't interested in committed singer-songwriters, for brevity called artists, nor those who embrace causes. I wasn't interested in Luigi Nono talking to his proletarian comrades with his avant-garde for few insiders, nor, in this sense, the Sleaford Mods talking about issues with the nation but especially with themselves, dissing here and there, up to Ringo Starr (Please Please Me Dead bingo. Brexit loves that fucking Ringo), guilty of having spoken well about Brexit.
It's worth saying that beyond the obvious contradiction between "break the system" and "lower the price of the merchandise", accepting the game of the parts, at this moment the Sleaford Mods represent a voice out of the chorus.
An aspect that seems avoided like the plague in Italy.
I was reasoning, in fact, on the fact that here in Italy, beyond the "they all steal", it's not like we've ever had artists capable of making a big voice. We must rummage in some intimate live-set in the years that were, but in big numbers, I don't recall anything striking. I'd save right Elio e le Storie Tese when they diverted the May Day concert with a version of "Ti Amo" then brutally interrupted by Mollica who had to have Ricky Gianco recount his rock past. In those five minutes of performance, you can still smell the TNT that shortly after would shock our nation.

A reality similar to the Sleaford Mods, also in its structure (electronic and speaking voice, which is very Suicide school, at least in its nasty, dirty and bad, not Wagner, way), could have been that of Offlaga Disco Pax, which I personally adored impossibly, but I am the first to recognize that the storytelling of the Emilian suburb effect lomo, with heroin, whores, blowjobs, the colored candy machine, Cuban athlete comrades, massacres, fascists and ultras, in the long run, had become a bit repetitive and anachronistic).

The Sleaford Mods instead have the presumption to want to improve things, swearing here and there like in those looser pubs of England where populism prevails.
Where once the anarch-vegan-anti-Christianity of Crass made sparks. And I, idiot, prefer the poetry of London Calling.

At the end of this journey that starts from Nottingham, we will have a clear view of a very radical and not very chic point of view of contemporary England and we will be able to call our friends who have been serving hamburgers at McDonald's for fifteen years and update them on this crazy, crazy England.
And maybe, they who have good reasons to be interested in the matter, could find certain considerations much more useful than us, intrigued by the sound, the stereotype or the word of mouth that brought them to us.

One thing must be said: Jason Williamson has an instinctive, animalistic, hypnotic poetic. Metrically speaking, he has all the features of a good flow: a condensate of hip hop and fuckin' away that captivates you.
I don't feel like calling it "generational voice," since these guys combined have a century, but it's worth saying that the forty-year-olds of today are the twenty-year-olds of forty years ago, and probably never like in history, our (even mine, alas) generation still has the task of tracing motivational lines and furrows.
This is not an album you can just listen to and judge by the bass lines. There are lyrics, protagonists, incomprehensible to listen to, unless reading them. Because even if what they say will not move my tomorrow by a millimeter, there has to be a reason if this vinyl ended up on my turntable (and not on YouTube, due to restrictions. And I would like so much to screw the system).
I certainly recognize the band has an aesthetic, a novelty in structural form, I like the voice of the charismatic leader, halfway between a hooligan and a toothless drunk eighty-year-old from Dover swearing at his white cliffs. And in the end, it's the narrative voice of a quite confused England that, thanks to the untamed British charm, reaches us. Another piece to add to the English puzzle of Crass, the Clash, Jonathan Coe's "brown period." What can I say: let's give them credit, they're cooler than us who in 40 years of DC, 20 of Forza Italia, and 5 of criminal asylum, managed to come up with just "La terra dei cachi" and a few nostalgic polaroids on Ustica, Radio Alice, and the Uno Bianca.
I would like to hope that one day we too will have our Sleaford Mods. I was aiming a lot at the hip-hop scene, but these do nothing but diss each other to increase insight volumes: they seem like a telenovela or when you're in the middle of a quarrel between strangers. Maybe, and I give them credit, the duo from Nottingham has an urgency: to communicate, using a really successful form. Then, I wish them the "brand new cadillac" as well. They will have the courtesy to retire from the scenes.
I recognize that at this moment, they represent the best of the genre and nothing happens by chance.
Not even the lucky "bingo" of this dirty duo.