For their Spare Ribs album campaign in 2021, UK electro-punk duo Sleaford Mods leaned heavily on video content as lockdown and social distancing made real world events impossible. One of the many highlights of that campaign was the launch of SMtv on YouTube that was presented as a magazine-style TV channel where they would be interviewed but also have a variety of musical guests. 

For new album UK Grim, they have brought the SMtv format back from another spin around the content block. 

The hour-long show featured live performances, interviews with the members about making the album, questions from fans, random animation and promo videos for singles from the album. 

We already covered the launch campaign for the title track of the album in our Behind The Single section showing how they took the Cold War Steve-created video and placed it into real-world contexts, notably showing it on a screen on the back of a truck driving around Parliament Square in London. 

SMtv was very much in the same spirit, with the group not holding back when it came to discussing politics (primarily in the UK, given the album title, but not exclusively so), culture wars and more.

It was initially streamed live on YouTube but was later made available as an on-demand stream on their official YouTube channel. 

They were already well-versed in what the format could do and how it should be structured based on what they did in 2021 and this, because it was not hemmed in by lockdown restrictions around filmed content, had far higher production values and was a much slicker, but not toothless, production. 

The message of the band cuts through everything they do – interviews, videos, live performances – so that something like this holds together incredibly well. Rather than offer a template for others to follow, this feels utterly unique to Sleaford Mods, something only they could carry off with the right mixture of fury, humour and bite.