Sleaford Mods: 'There’s always something to say'

“It always pays to get to know someone, it always pays to compromise,” reflects the 55-year-old, talking to The Yorkshire Post via video from his home in Nottingham. “These two things really have enabled us to carry on. And also, we just love creating stuff, whether it’s for our own personal projects – Andrew’s got Extnddntwrk, I collaborate with other people – or whether it’s Sleaford Mods. Plus there’s always something to say.”

With his splenetic dissections of austerity Britain and working-class life, Williamson has never been short of things to say over the course of the last 19 years. (Sleaford Mods’ first four albums were made with studio engineer Simon Pafrement before Williamson encountered Fearn in a Nottingham nightclub and suggested they work together.)

He believes his world-view has shifted since their last album, UK Grim, reached the top three in March 2023. “The invasion of Ukraine, (the) October 7 (terror attack in Israel), these horrible occurences in Africa – in Sudan, Syria, everywhere. I think global politics really has become domestic politics for everybody. The autocratic leaders that are emerging, fascist leaders...particularly with America, obviously with Russia, Hungary, all over the place.

“It’s surprising how many people don’t want it and yet it’s in because these people are preying on economic weaknesses in people, and promising people a brighter future. Farage over here.

“I got sick of hating people that I can’t get near, but I guess that goes with Joe Public as well or the mob, as I like to call them now. It says a lot really when you’ve got more disdain for people of similar political beliefs to you than you have of politicians or populists that are causing all the problems.”

Williamson suggests that “people not thinking for themselves” has led us into this mob-like situation. “People get taken away by narrative guilt, by atrocities, and people almost trying to almost cure the atrocities themselves whether that be it by ardent digital activism or these actions that are just insane, wishing death on people regardless of who they are. It’s just not helping, and it’s this arrogance that comes with it, it just winds me up. How can you profess to have compassion for people when you’re talking to me like your head’s up your a***? And these are normally people that are completely unaffected by it; if they are affected by it in some way in England, coming from a minority community – I’m talking about October 7 – then that’s almost played upon as well.

“It’s not as though I’ve had enough of it – I bizarrely get a lot of inspiration from this, and I think this is what has powered the album alongside introspection, self-critique, of questions about myself.”

The vocalist recently said that he saw Sleaford Mods as a “humanist band” rather than one that was left-wing. Today, he sounds wary of ideology. “I think it’s gone from common sense and compassion to almost this impulsive demand to conform to what the general collective feel is the right thing to do,” Williamson says.

“There is an expectation, particularly in music currently, to say the right thing. But I think that’s changing now. I think people are stepping back and going, ‘Hold on, this isn’t working’, this ardent fascism almost that has taken the left, especially the far left, into this almost hateful vitriol.

“I was a part of that years ago in the golden years of Twitter, whether it was leave and remain, whether it was having a go at anti-vaxxers, calling people gammon, I was a big part of that. But really, in some respects that was very mild compared to what is going on today.”

Therapy has also helped him to live more harmoniously with the world – at least up to a point. “Yes, I’ve piped down a bit, I’m going to remain quiet online, I’m not going to attack individuals, I’m not going to name individuals in songs – apart from the obvious, people like Trump and Andrew Tate need talking about still, they are some of the engineers of this pain. To a certain degree Vladimir Putin and other people as well, (like) Farage.

“I don’t feel there is a need to create witch hunts for people – bands or whatever – any more, so in that sense I’m calming down, but I still just hate them, it’s all done in silence. And also in the sense of just thinking about it, trying to pacify myself a little bit because at the end of the day I don’t want to see any of these people in pain. As much as I think they’re s***, I don’t want to see them in misery. I think popping at people only adds to it.”

In his fifties, he has learned to use social media more carefully. “I think you have to sit down and say, I’m older. It’s not that I’ve mellowed out​​​​​​​, I’m just older. There’s a certain amount of wisdom that attaches itself to everybody, even non-thinkers, it comes​​​​​​​. The truth really does attach itself to people​​​​​​​ and it’s up to that person whether or not they’re going to use it.”

The Demise of Planet X is out on Friday. Sleaford Mods play at O2 Academy Leeds on February 12.