Sleaford Mods: 'this is music about the misery of life'

They have won plaudits for their unflinching take on the pitfalls of modern society. On stage, Williamson paces around like a caged animal.

The vocalist spoke to EDWIN GILSON about the guilt of leaving full-time work for music, the origins of the duo, and why he takes exception to being labelled a working-class icon.

Hi Jason, where are you?

I’m shopping for running trainers. Don’t put that in the article. It’s a discount shop. You can put that part in the article, people will love that.

You said you felt ‘guilty’ in the months after you stopped working to concentrate on music. At the same time, many of your lyrics rail against the nine to five grind of working life. These seem like fairly contrasting sentiments....

They are, but it was always the idea to get out of work if we could. The guilt came because you get institutionalised, don’t you, and you feel like you’re leaving all your mates behind while going on into this very privileged existence.

Which isn’t privileged at all, by the way, when you start getting into the realities of touring. To be honest it has turned into work, but you don’t want to communicate that very often because its insulting to people who work really s***** jobs.

What’s the alternative to this grind, or institutionalisation as you say? How can we stop people falling into routines, or ruts?

People have their own goals, and, without wanting to sound cheesy, everybody has their own dreams. Sometimes its important to think unrealistically and have a measure of that in your day. It certainly did wonders for me.

My head was in the clouds for years and years, and I refused to get rid of that or have it stamped out of me. Eventually I got to do something that was interesting.

Is that possible for people who have stressful jobs, to have that kind of outlet?

I don’t know - I think it’s down to your psyche and how you are. I don’t come from a background where I was privileged, but it was by no means an impoverished background.

I came from the typical background that the majority of people do come from. So I think it is possible, yeah.

You said that when you started writing you were sitting on the sofa and suddenly some lyrics came to you - what gave you the confidence to think they were good enough to perform live?

They just seemed to work in my head. My b****** detector was on full alert by that point, I’d failed in so many projects. I was sitting on my sofa drinking black coffee that night - because I couldn’t afford any milk - in my pyjamas, watching TV, when I wrote one of my first rants.

I knew that worked, and I thought I just needed to get that onto the right bit of backing music and I would be away.

And then you met Andrew in a local pub, right?

Yes. He was DJing at a gig I was playing at.

I was outside having a cigarette and I could hear this music coming out. I didn’t know what it was, but it sounded great. I had a rough idea of what I wanted for my backing music, and it sounded something like that.

I was into the Wu-Tang Clan, and I wanted it to be something industrial, like that. I knew I’d met the perfect person for the job, and not long after we had the first scratchings of Austerity Dogs, which was initially called something rude before our manager rejigged things a bit.

There has almost been too much political dysfunction over the summer to write about it all. Would you be that directly political with your future music, at any rate?

I think if you write from an observer’s point of view it’s always better. I’m completely bias anyway, because I’m completely against the right-wing and their policies. But you don’t want to be shoving your thoughts down people’s throats. I was reading a thing in The Guardian the other day and they were talking about Kate Tempest, who is more outwardly political, and then they argued that we run away from politics in interviews.

I thought about it for a minute, and realised they were correct in a way, but in another way I don’t want to do that. If I was just reeling off political jargon, or being too obvious about it, it would kill the point I think.

You’ve railed against musicians you used to love, like Noel Gallagher and Paul Weller. How are musicians supposed to grow old in your view?

I think I got my point across back at the time when I said those things. I was angry about it then, but I’ve not given it much thought in regards to those two people. Live and let live, I suppose.

You’re always going to get somebody like me buzzing in your ear if you’re a musician like that - I’ll probably get that in a few more years. It’s a revolving cycle. What goes around comes around.

Are your on-stage tics exaggerated at all, or is it more unconscious than that?

They are unconscious, but sometimes I notice I’m getting into a rhythm so I’ll keep doing that. It is an act, but partly I do it because I enjoy it and it makes me feel good.

You’ve said it is mainly the press who have built this idea of you as a voice for working-class Britain; do you feel this tag is patronising?

Patronising, yeah, and uninformed. Anybody who rattles on about class too much is going to drown in it. We never said we were a class band, we just wrote about what we were experiencing.

Because there is an accent to it, because its a bit gruff and there is some swearing, people assume we’re just rough. I’m obviously aware of class restrictions, but that tag can do my head in a bit.

Does it feel strange to perform to an audience, though, like the one you will probably play to in Brighton, who are predominantly middle-class and haven’t necessarily experienced the economic hardships you describe in your music?

I think everybody experiences misery. This is music about the experience of misery, of life. You take away politics, you still get misery.

Sleaford Mods, The Brighton Dome, Church Street, Brighton, Monday, October 31, 7pm, £16.50, 01273 709709