Sleaford Mods
★★★★
UK Grim
ROUGH TRADE. CD/DL/LP
Desperate, dank: bleak duo drill down into the state of the nation and themselves.
Just when you think Sleaford Mods can’t pick any more stringy flesh from the bones of their skip-scavenged muse, Andrew Fearn and Jason Williamson have a way of finding fresh meat. If 2021’s Spare Ribs edged towards newly controlled lyricism, UK Grim is abstracted by rage and anxiety, Liz Truss, Vladimir Putin and Sid James swirling about in a tornado of fight-or-fight cortisol. There’s comic rap-battle grudge-bearing against contemporaries on D.I.Why, but Tilldipper, Right Wing Beast and the title track (a brazier-huddled Firestarter) have bigger, more rotten fish to fry. Accomplices don’t ease the tension: Perry Farrell pitches in with So Trendy’s bubbling disgust, while Force 10 From Navarone uncannily casts Dry Cleaning’s Florence Shaw in Williamson’s image (“fucking viral fucking Batman video you fucking moron”). Inventive, reactive, but hauntingly untethered, there’s no doubt UK Grim comes from a very bad place.