Sleaford Mods, South Facing Festival, review: as if Philip Glass met Johnny Rotten at a squalid rave

The ornamental lake at Crystal Palace in south-east London has a storied musical history. Between 1961 and the Nineties, a lakeside stage in this natural amphitheatre hosted concerts by everyone from the London Symphony Orchestra and Pink Floyd to Elton John and Vera Lynn. Bob Marley played his last London concert there. At 1972’s Garden Party festival, Who drummer Keith Moon reached the stage by hovercraft and later rowed back across the water dressed in military regalia to serve tea and cake to people on the banks. In 1997, a new stage was built with an angled canopy of oxidised steel. What locals affectionately refer to as the “rusty laptop” has sat dormant for years.

But the new South Facing Festival aims to change this. The month-long event will host open air concerts from the likes of Supergrass, English National Opera and The Streets. But honours on the opening, overcast Saturday went to Sleaford Mods, the electro-punk duo who may not have arrived by hovercraft but embodied the surreal and steadfast rock’n’ roll energy that Moon brought to the Bowl almost half a century ago.

Sleaford Mods are Jason Williamson and Andrew Fearn. The Nottingham pair specialise on spoken word scuzz-punk. Over minimalist looped electronic beats from Fearn’s (real, unrusty) laptop, Williamson unleashes a poetic, spit-flecked East Midlands sprechgesang. His angry, sometimes satirical lyrics cover austerity-era Britain and working-class life, and skewer political hypocrisy at every turn. They may not be ones for the Pimms-and-picnic-rug brigade, but the Mods’ last two albums, 2019’s Eton Alive and this year’s Spare Ribs, have gone top 10.

Standing amid a forest of vertical strobe lights, Williamson addressed the crowd’s Covid-inflicted hibernation early on. “Are you walking around feeling like you’ve lost something? Shall we try and get it back tonight?’ he asked. And, boy, did the audience try. Pent-up hedonism fizzed throughout the Bowl (stoked by the sleazy funk of support act Baxter Dury, who’s father Ian played here on the royal wedding day in 1981). With sun and total freedom, you sense the country’s going to lose its collective mind.

Tied Up In Nottz was an early Mods highlight. The track was metronomic and largely melody-free. But Fearn’s deceptively simple sonic concoctions combined with Williamson’s polemics to turn it into something vital. Imagine if Philip Glass met Johnny Rotten at a squalid basement rave – that’s Sleaford Mods. The opening line – “The smell of piss is so strong / It smells like decent bacon” – is as unforgettable as it is uncomfortable.

Williamson, 50, strutted and preened like an indignant chicken. He’s a character. This is, after all, the man who released a series of online lockdown cooking classes wearing nothing but an apron, under the name Baking Daddy. Williamson will soon make a cameo appearance in the new series of Peaky Blinders; he’s a national anti-treasure in the making. Fearn, for his part, took a leaf out of Chris Lowe from the Pet Shop Boys’ book by standing behind his computer and doing very little.

One disappointing flaw was that the concert was held on a makeshift floating stage on the lake rather than on the rusty laptop itself, hidden behind. Looking at the state of it, I’m not sure the old stage is fully concert-ready. But it didn’t matter. Because the sound in the bowl was – ahem – crystal, and the music on offer was brutally compelling. South Facing feels like an exciting new addition to London’s festival scene. It was wonderful to see this old venue rebooted.

Until Aug 29. Tickets: southfacingfestival.com