![\"Gwendoline](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/01\/\/44cef3fa-ed80-4e20-aea1-775b45d8d8c0.jpg\")
<\/p>\nWithin minutes of me meeting Jason Williamson and Andrew Fearn on the streets of Nottingham, a man walks past and screams, \u201cYou\u2019re a paedo!\u201d into his phone before slamming it onto the pavement and running off. It feels like a scene from a Sleaford Mods song. Williamson and Fearn formed Sleaford Mods in 2013 after years of thwarted ambitions, and they did it by combining Williamson\u2019s surrealistic kitchen sink monologues, like an episode of Coronation Street written by Samuel Beckett, with Fearn\u2019s harsh electronic loops, stripping the artistic process to its bare bones in the process. <\/p>\n
\u201cThis is your classic hippy shop,\u201d says Fearn, 54, as we pass a place called Ice Nine that sells crystals, bongs and other accessories to the alternative lifestyle. \u201cYou would come to a place like this if you didn\u2019t fit in. Nottingham was a melting pot where everyone got along, as long as you weren\u2019t a \u2018trendy\u2019.\u201d<\/p>\n
Sleaford Mods\u2019 approach of peeling back the layers of British life to see what festering wound lies underneath certainly wouldn\u2019t go down well with the average trendy, but it has proved a surprise success: their unlikely formula of Williamson unleashing furious monologues while Fearn hits the space bar of a laptop and shuffles about a bit has filled arenas and led to Top Ten albums. Now comes The Demise of Planet X, which features among its guests the actress Gwendoline Christie, screaming at the top of her voice on a song called The Good Life. I\u2019ve come to Sleaford Mods\u2019 home town to understand how this strange brew was formed. <\/p>\n
\u201cThis is Jamcaf\u00e9,\u201d Williamson says, pointing to a tiny bar on Heathcoat Street. Around the corner is the 10,000-capacity Motorpoint Arena, which the duo filled in 2021. \u201cIn 2006 the Jamcaf\u00e9 was one of the only places that would have me perform with a backing track. That was a few years before I got a job as a housing officer for Beeston council.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cI remember coming here to see Jason. He finished the last song, threw the microphone in the air, and marched off down the street,\u201d says Fearn, who spent years making electronic music on his own while doing odd jobs, including a stint of cold-calling people to sell them fitness membership discounts. \u201cIt all went from there.\u201d<\/p>\n
Most bands find success in their mid-twenties. Williamson and Fearn were stuck in the daily grind until well into their forties. \u201cWe were always ambitious,\u201d Williamson says as we continue our tour. \u201cEven when there was no sign that we would ever make it.\u201d<\/p>\n
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Sleaford Mods in Abbey Road Studios with actor Gwendoline Christie \u2014 whose laugh opens the new album<\/p>\n
KI PRICE<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s a case of believing in yourself and not worrying what anyone thinks,\u201d adds Fearn, the more zen-like of the two. \u201cWe were inspired by the noise scene in Nottingham, which wasn\u2019t made for the wider world. One guy used to make 15 minutes of pure noise while handing out plastic bags.\u201d<\/p>\n
Williamson was also inspired by a less obscure source: television talent shows. \u201cThese kids would come on The X Factor and do Angels by Robbie Williams and there was no band, just the music coming through a speaker. And I thought: let\u2019s do that. I was sick of being in bands, sick of the guitarist going off to get his car fixed halfway through the rehearsal, so when I met Andrew it was like meeting Obi-Wan Kenobi in the desert: a revelation.\u201d<\/p>\n
Williamson wrote one Sleaford Mods classic, Jobseeker, during his lunch break at a frozen chicken factory. Another, Tied Up In Nottz, finds him raging about popular brands of breakfast cereal. \u201cI just knew I couldn\u2019t do the same old Britpop thing,\u201d he says of the subject matter. \u201cI remember hearing the Stereophonics doing Handbags and Gladrags and thinking: this is the end. That realisation, combined with influences from the Wu-Tang Clan and the Streets, listening to people in pubs, and making music on a sofa with a laptop felt so much more modern than some bloke with an Epiphone guitar, singing about the sunshine.\u201d<\/p>\n
Sleaford Mods\u2019 real trick has been to take the formula and run with it, so much so that famous actresses are now queueing up to work with them. How did Christie come on board? \u201cShe followed us on Instagram,\u201d Williamson says. \u201cShe\u2019s from a different world.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cShe\u2019s jet-setting all over the place, but when she came and spent a day in the studio she was totally into it,\u201d Fearn adds. \u201cI binge-watched Game of Thrones and thought: who the hell is this? She\u2019s captivating.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cMy laugh opens the new album,\u201d Christie confirms of her part on The Demise of Planet X. \u201cIn my most listless moments an impossible fantasy of mine was to be on a Sleaford Mods record, so few things have made me happier.\u201d <\/p>\n
\u2022 Sleaford Mods \u2014 meet the George Orwells of rock<\/a><\/p>\n Christie was in Romania, filming the Netflix show Wednesday<\/a>, when Russia invaded Ukraine. \u201cIt was terrifying, even just to be so geographically close, but listening to Sleaford Mods got me up in the morning, made me able to smile. They inspired me to take my life more seriously and, conversely, more lightly. These men are a blast.\u201d<\/p>\n That\u2019s an aspect of Sleaford Mods that often gets lost: the humour. The title track of The Demise of Planet X may be a state-of-the nation rant, but it is set to the theme tune of The Magic Roundabout. \u201cGina\u2019s going to spread it round the shops that I\u2019ve got a wiener,\u201d Williamson frets on Gina Was, a childhood memory of a local girl pulling down his trousers and mocking the size of his genitalia. It is both painful and absurd.<\/p>\n \u201cThat\u2019s always been important: to say something meaningful,\u201d Williamson says as we come into a crowded caf\u00e9, where half the clientele appear to know who he is. \u201cYou get all these wankers giving it the big one on social media, but their music is bubblegum bullshit. Why aren\u2019t they documenting the times?\u201d<\/p>\n Williamson: \u201cWhen I met Andrew it was like meeting Obi-Wan Kenobi in the desert: a revelation\u201d<\/p>\n JIM DYSON\/GETTY IMAGES<\/p>\n As Sleaford Mods do on Flood the Zone, a portrait of Trump\u2019s excesses set to a cheery fairground melody, and on Megaton, an overview of fashionable attitudes to modern warfare. \u201cWhy is no one talking about Ukraine any more? It\u2019s weird,\u201d Williamson says. \u201cMegaton is about my fatigue with \u2018I know better than you\u2019 politics, calling people gammons and so on. There is a new generation who may have good intentions, but they\u2019re using [global politics] as a look on social media. I realised it after Madrid, when I was getting messages that were horrible, completely unhinged.\u201d<\/p>\n He\u2019s talking about a concert in November 2023, which Williamson cut short after an audience member kept throwing a Palestinian flag on stage. \u201cI said, I don\u2019t know enough about it, I don\u2019t want to centre myself in it, and after that we had an onslaught. I thought: hold on, you were down the pub six months ago and now you\u2019re an expert [in Middle Eastern politics]. One guy was trolling me from a homeless shelter. It bothered me, but at the same time it was a taste of my own medicine.\u201d<\/p>\n \u2022 Portishead\u2019s Geoff Barrow: \u2018I wasn\u2019t very good at doing drugs\u2019<\/a><\/p>\n Williamson, once a witty if overly scabrous social media enthusiast, has left all that behind. \u201cIt used to be playful. But now people are aiming for the cancellation, waiting for their enemy to be shut down and have their careers ended. It is quite dark.\u201d<\/p>\n Arguably, it doesn\u2019t work for Williamson to be taking a pop at successful musicians now that he\u2019s one himself. \u201cTrue. Back in the day, when I was slagging off Kasabian, I was really angry at their diluted, Easy Rider approach to indie rock. No disrespect to Kasabian or anything \u2026\u201d<\/p>\n Fearn, left: \u201cWe were inspired by the noise scene in Nottingham\u201d<\/p>\n ANDREW FOX FOR THE TIMES<\/p>\n Perish the thought. \u201cBut I was no one back then and now I\u2019m quite famous,\u201d he continues. \u201cI still get angry. I get angry at bands who want to look good in photographs rather than show the reality. But Claire, my wife and our manager, told me I had to stop slagging everyone off because it was getting boring. That\u2019s what The Good Life is about.\u201d<\/p>\n These days, when he\u2019s not on tour, Fearn leads a quiet life in Burton-on-Trent. Williamson lives in Nottingham with his wife and children, and can afford to indulge a love of Japanese casual wear. He has since accepted that his tendency to attack other bands in public \u2014 the Bristol punks Idles<\/a> got it in the neck, leading their singer Joe Talbot to contact Sleaford Mods and ask what their problem was \u2014 is down to insecurity. <\/p>\n \u201cI\u2019ve done therapy. It goes back to childhood, of not feeling seen \u2026\u201d<\/p>\n He thinks about it for a while.<\/p>\n \u201cBut there\u2019s still a part of me that really f***ing hates all the other bands.\u201d<\/p>\n The Demise of Planet X by Sleaford Mods (Rough Trade) is out on Jan 16<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Within minutes of me meeting Jason Williamson and Andrew Fearn on the streets of Nottingham, a man walks…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":398097,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[28],"tags":[49,48,75,341],"class_list":{"0":"post-398096","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-music","8":"tag-ca","9":"tag-canada","10":"tag-entertainment","11":"tag-music"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/398096","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=398096"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/398096\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/398097"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=398096"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=398096"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=398096"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![\"Jason](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/01\/\/b539ebf6-a47d-4b65-ba56-b07b236f1906.jpg\")
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