Album Review: Eton Alive by Sleaford Mods

The first album released on Sleaford Mods' own Extreme Eating label, Eton Alive's title is as pithy a summation of how the upper class uses and abuses the 99% as one would expect from the duo. Taken together with their label's moniker, Jason Williamson and Andrew Fearn's fifth album establishes an eat-or-be-eaten world: Bellies bulge on "Big Burt," and arachnids hide in street food as synths gulp and wobble on "Kebab Spider. " In some ways, Eton Alive feels like the flip side to English Tapas, another Sleaford Mods album with a consumption-oriented title.

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The target of Sleaford Mods' disdain becomes clear as soon as vocalist Jason Williamson proclaims, "Graham Coxon looks like a left-wing Boris Johnson."   Rather than reporting realities from the Midlands in austerity-stricken Britain, Eton Alive focuses squarely on hierarchies. All establishments — celebrity activism, politicians and pay walls — sit in the path of the Mods' acerbic wit.   Instrumentally, this record doesn't do anything revelatory that distinguishes it from their other releases. However, in maintaining their usual ….

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T hat Sleaford Mods' three most recent albums have resonated so widely, despite being so at odds with any of their peers, is largely down to the focused ire of Jason Williamson's lyrics, a winning mix of stream-of-consciousness bile and absurdist humour. The anger is still prominent on the Nottingham duo's first album on their own label, but it's now tempered by a greater sense of resignation, most notably on those songs where he drops his regular sprechgesang in favour of actual singing, as on the lyrically vulnerable Firewall ("You don't know you're crying at all/ Because of your firewall") and When You Come Up to Me. While the album title might suggest a focus on the Old Etonian architects of austerity, Eton Alive is very much small-p political.

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Can we take a moment to talk about Andrew Fearn? You know, the 'silent half' of Sleaford Mods? No, not that one, the other one. The chap in the Chief Wiggum tee who hits play on Jason Williamson's backing track before kicking back and cracking a few cans of Stella. The Chris Lowe of punk, content to be eclipsed by his outspoken bandmate; the Andrew Ridgely of scuzzy electronica, eternally destined to be the hardest answer of any given pub quiz.

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S leaford Mods' frontman Jason Williamson recently revealed that lately he's been listening to Alexander O'Neal, Chaka Khan and Luther Vandross, although the Nottinghamshire duo haven't suddenly gone soul or R&B. However, Andrew Fearn's backing tracks are forever evolving and are a fair distance from 2013's breakthrough, Austerity Dogs. The terrific Kebab Spiders is powered by two alternate basslines: one sounds like the sort of thing the great James Jamerson used to lay down for Motown and the other is clubbier, almost Belgian new beat.

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Photo by Roger Sargent "Siddown. Just shut up. I'll talk. No, you just siddown. I'll talk." The commands that begin "Policy Cream", the third track on Sleaford Mods' new album Eton Alive, feel like a more general aesthetic statement of purpose. For the uninitiated: vocalist Jason Williamson ….

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