Post-Punk Musical Duo Sleaford Mods Dive Into Group Dynamics, Touring and the Label of Punk

Jason: He wanted to do it in that whole fish-eye lens, 90s thing, which he did and it was brilliant. But no it wasn’t our idea. I think with artists like Missy Elliot, and black artists in general, people just don’t come round to what they’re doing till about 20 years later. It’s so far advanced and generally culture just takes off what black musicians are doing in many respects. It’s like constantly catching up.

Your newest album went amazingly.

Jason: Commercially, it’s the best one we’ve done. It really has built bridges in other places for us. Obviously in England it just feels like it’s got bigger, hasn’t it?

Andrew: Yeah it has. I guess I’m starting to appreciate what we have actually done. Making that transition is quite difficult. When we played [London’s] South Facing Festival in the summer, “Mork n Mindy” from the new album was the seventh track in or something and there was a massive cheer that went up when that started. That shows that promotion is working. When you are a bigger band, you do need promotion to get things out there, it’s not going to be word of mouth anymore. It was a shit load of gigging that got our audience for us and then when Jason started the fan page it exploded and was too much for him to deal with. We gave it to [the fans] to run and they wanted it anyway. That’s one of the great things about how genuine our experience has been.

Looks like you guys aren’t dicks to fans when they approach you. You were very welcoming to that guy when we were taking photos.

Jason: I don’t think I’ve ever been rude to a fan. We’re not like Harry Styles are we? We don’t get the feverish approach from fans, I guess. We don’t get people screaming or running after us.

Andrew: Sometimes at a gig we get what I call the “father/son combo.” We’re in this era where you’ve got a dad that likes the Stones and a kid who likes the Arctics and they both come and see us. One time I was walking back to the venue and this guy was like: “What are you doing? You’re just walking down the street?” He couldn’t believe I wasn’t in a limo or didn’t have a bodyguard with me.

How much do you see each other outside of Sleaford Mods?

Andrew: Not a huge amount really. We work really quickly and we have a good time when we’re together. We didn’t know each other before we started doing this so it’s a very different thing then when you were friends before and had that history together. I think that’s why a lot of bands split up actually.

Jason: Outside of “work” we don’t really see each other.

But we don’t have great friendship circles anyway. We’re not massively distracted by lots of other things. It’s kind of like a friendship outside of the band as well, but not.

Your spoken word is incredibly eloquent Jason. Where does your interest in language and words come from?

Jason: God knows. I’ll be honest I just started doing it and that was it. I started doing it in 2003 or 2004. I moved away from singing and started doing spoken word and felt “ahhh that’s better.” I was getting more out there and I always felt a bit constricted by verse, chorus, verse, chorus. I mean we have that with Sleaford Mods but it’s different — it’s more spoken word or “rappy” or whatever you want to call it. It’s broader, more space. I always had more to say and so when I started doing spoken word narrative on a song that kind of felt better.

How have you expanded your vocabulary?

Jason: I read every day. But only for about half an hour. I get bored.

Andrew: I think it’s got a lot to do with being outside of academia. There’s this thing about behavior, where we all know all these words but we just need to access them through nurturing, and if you can self-nurture then you’re going to develop into something more interesting than something learned from textbooks.

Jason: I think so. You do pick up new words but you generally use the same words in your vocabulary. There’s a lot of slang in there and in-jokes and that makes up for perhaps longer words. But would you really want to sound like an historian on a record? I do enjoy words and Andrew’s very good at suggesting them. We’ve got a very similar sense of humor. We’ll just vibe off one word all day and it’ll be so funny. Touring’s good for that– when you’re in each other’s pockets. Humor is very important. When I was writing lyrics before I met Andrew, it was very insular and woe-is-me bull- shit, you know, Richard-Ashcroft-The-Verve era lyrics or Noel Gallagher-whimsical-contemplation-bollocks. When I started writing stuff down in poetry or spoken word form, I found I could create lots more humor there. You’d find yourself laughing which was a new thing. It made it more real and more impactful.

Laughter’s good.

Jason: It is! Most of the time really, even if you might be miserable, you generally laugh don’t you? To a certain degree. Back when I was working, you were very con- fined with what you could do with your life.

Andrew: It’s an important part of working class entertainment to be able to laugh at yourself. That laugh or you’ll cry sort of thing. Bleak humor.

I saw Spiritualized play Hackney Empire some years ago and Jason Pierce stood sideways to the audience for the entire show, looking at the wings and not engaging at all with the crowd. Do you ever feel like doing that?

Jason: No I don’t necessarily block them out. I do kind of sing sideways a lot. Half-turned I guess because I like the way it looks and I also naturally do that. We’re not performing for the audience. We’re doing it for ourselves to a certain degree. You feel comfortable and it’s a look. I’ve never wanted to block the audience out but you do get nervous and you don’t look at people a lot of the time.

Andrew: I guess lyrically we have the odd song like “Tweet Tweet Tweet” that has a direct message. But a lot of it doesn’t have that thing like the Levellers of having to communicate a message. There is a lot of boozing with the audience though. We hold the record at The Hammersmith Apollo for the most alcohol sold at a show.

Jason: We beat Motörhead who’d held the record before us which I thought was fucking crazy, really.

Andrew: I think it’s because people are having a great time, really having it. It’s not like we’re a DJ act but the audience is really animated and drinking and dancing.

You’re one of the few bands where interviews usually open with questions about your political stances. Do you feel that people are just fishing for a sound bite?

Jason: Yeah. But it’s always been a bit like that. It used to happen a lot more than it does now. Now you get a lot of people who take the job seriously. They look into it and think about it more, which is refreshing.

Andrew: People wanting you to be a “voice for the work- ing class.” After the third album, all the interviews were like that and in the process of doing all those interviews, we really had to try and knock that on the head and change it.

Do you feel like you can still be narrators for unheard voices?

Jason: I think that now that we’ve got more money, we’re better off. I don’t know. I think there are a lot of things we talk about. We talk about it a lot on Spare Ribs so I suppose so.

How long does it take you to come down from a tour? It’s a very intense performance.

Jason: It takes me about two weeks. You find yourself in a zone and then you just crash. I’m going through the crash now from the headline performance at [Wiltshire’s] End of the Road Festival. I’m a bit pissed off. Definitely a bit blue.



Andrew: Staying on tour would be easier than coming off tour.