The fog outside the window extends into the distance, gradually revealing Nottingham's outer reaches. Junkyards and MOT garages emerge, preceding a funnel shaped tower that signals the arrival at the East Midland train depot. The Cross Keys Inn pub is a ten-minute walk from the station, attached to a series of cobbled streets that once played host to market traders and now houses the usual run of Carluccio's and Whistles outfitters. Jason Williamson, frontman for Sleaford Mods, is comfortably waiting at a table inside.The band are releasing a new album on Friday, in the form of English Tapas. Its release on Rough Trade marks a new chapter of sorts for the group, who have, in the last seven years, released nine albums through lesser-known independent labels. Looking back on press about the band (which, alongside Williamson, comprises another member in Andrew Fearn), there's always been a sense about two things: that they've been positioned as the embodiment of all the spitting, politicised rage of the working class – and that they like banging away shitloads of drugs.On the one hand, this placement is understandable: when the band emerged with their break-through track "Tied Up In Nottz" in 2014 – a hungover and pumping sojourn through the piss-scented topography of Nottingham (and beyond) – they captured the specifics of a British experience that more pristine and clandestine groups of the time had never and would never have engaged with. "Can of Strongbow, I'm a mess / desperately clutching onto a leaflet on depression supplied to me by the NHS," Williamson sings on "Jobseeker" – another song, originally recorded in 2008, that the band also released three years ago. As for the drugs? "[I was] probably [doing] about three or four in a night. Grams [of cocaine]", Williamson said in an interview with The Guardian.Read more on Noisey.
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