And now for something completely British

Market Garden's 'Flag' as musical summary of Britain circa 2024

Here on the psy-opped shores of perfidious Albion, shouty minimalist post-punk made a comeback during austerity years, as the ostensibly Tory wing of the globalist uniparty required an ostensibly left-wing controlled-opposition to make the whole tawdry Punch & Judy show seem a bit more emotionally involving. Happy to step up to the job of representing this opposition on Later with Jools Holland were stony-faced Nottingham duo Sleaford Mods. This was punk, but not as you know it. Gone was the irreverent humour and violent exuberance of 1970s punk; Sleaford Mods fused joyless irony with a poise of sullen resentment. Vocalist Jason Williamson delivers his spoken-word rants while the hilariously passive-aggressive Andrew Fearn stands behind of a laptop, drinking a can of beer and pressing 'Play' when a new song begins.

Of course, nobody should be surprised to learn that the Sleaford Mods utilised their pose of class-war hostility to win the approval of the bourgeoisie, gain a degree of cultural prestige, and proceed to spout the values of the Establishment they claim to hate. 'Transphobes' and 'anti-vaxxers' joined 'Tories' and 'jolly fuckers' in the rogue's gallery of 'people that Sleaford Mods think ARE TOTAL C**TS'. Get jabbed, you wankers.

Hope those toilets were trans-inclusive, guys.

Along a similar vein, back in August I saw a band whose name I have edited out of this piece, because they’re a relatively small band and I felt bad about naming-and-dunking on them. While younger and imbued with a greater sense of fun than the scowling, self-important Sleafords, this particular band played it very safe indeed, singing about wanting crisps and hating Jamie Oliver. I genuinely wanted to like them, as they initially showed some promise, but their aesthetic was just too twee and post-modern, along the lines of that risible Guardian article on 'Britishcore': crap food and inane pop-culture references intermingled with basic-bitch politics. Such is their devotion to the temple of Current Things that their Twitter feed is flecked with personal attacks on ‘terfs’ who had the audacity to, uhh… retweet them and help promote their music. Lovely chaps. I’m sure they’ll go far.

“noooo!!! you can’t retweet us you’re a transphobe!!! can i have some crisps?”

However, let us not become despondent at the sheer amount of ideological slurry that passes for 'edgy, relevent music' in Starmered Britain. As Tolkien recognized, inspiration can be negative as well as positive; one can use what one detests as a thrust-block towards that which inspires and uplifts. I am, of course, talking about the genius of Market Garden.

Originating from a one-off track ('Cheeky') produced as a joke by my old friend (and Dodcast guest) Anthony Saggers, Market Garden is the band Sleaford Mods wish they were, but are too busy fellating the corporate-media to become. Where the trendy neo-punk wannabes utilise a poise of banal 'relatability' that is actually deeply contrived and self-conscious, Market Garden utilises artifice to express the truth of Britain in 2024 in way that is unflinching, hilarious, and brutal.

Saggers does this by creating a fictional character, Tony Garden, a disaffected English lumpen-proletarian, perpetually on the verge of a complete psychotic breakdown, whose personal failures are a microcosmic reflection of the ways in which society has failed him, and millions like him. On Market Garden's first album Look What You Made Me Do, Tony harasses a businessman on the train in 'Dave', tries (and fails) to commit suicide in 'Bills', tries (and fails) to buy some cannabis in 'Sorted', and claims that 'even the fackin' seagulls are larrrfin' at me!' in the aptly-named 'Seagulls'. Saggers, an urbane, educated musician, could hardly be mistaken for Tony Garden in the street, but despite this apparent gulf between them, Saggers depicts the poor, ignorant Tony with compassion; he suffers with Tony, and refuses to condemn him, as so many would. As such, many moments on the album are surprisingly poignant; Tony's despair over the cost-of-living crisis in 'Bills' is actually quite heart-wrenching. By ending the album on a triumphant (if slightly unhinged) note in 'Cheeky', Saggers shows Tony's indomitable spirit, and we cheer along with him.

Fundamentally, Tony Garden is a product of a Britain that no longer exists, adrift in a country he no longer recognizes. Market Garden’s visual mascot is Terry Thomas, star of numerous classic British comedies in which he played a slightly rum but essentially benign cad. The music has a nostalgic, melancholic flavour, inflected by the goth and post-punk that Saggers grew up with, and his day-job as a composer of sombre, reflective neoclassical and ambient music. Shades of Derek & Clive, Dr Feelgood, the Sisters of Mercy, and Jilted John all appear, like ghosts from the days when you could still smoke in pubs. Since the first release, Saggers has used Market Garden's satirical approach to delve further into issues of identity, patriotism, and national decline. From the “official World Cup banger”, ‘World Cup (Dying in the Street)’, to the latest single 'Flag', Market Garden's musical statement has continued to be complex, ambiguous, and genuinely hilarious.

I admit I might be a tad biased regarding 'Flag', as I contributed some guest vocals to it (try to spot where). In this track, Tony Garden, incensed by woke virtue-signalling campaigns on social media, decides to start his own, and pledges not to “touch, eat, or go anywhere near anything that wasn't British for five entire weeks #Britain.” Upon realising that Britain no longer manufacturers anything because “the fuckin' industry's all been sold off to forein c**ts”, Tony burns all of his clothes and paints himself in the colours of the Union Jack. “Turns out these days you actually get arrested if you walk around stark bollock-naked painted like the Union Jack,” Tony learns to his dismay. “Who'da thought it?”

Much like his collaborator Phil Holmes, who contributes saxophone to this piece, Saggers is aware that one can make music that is topical and relevant without bashing the listener over the head with an ideology. Saggers does not promote Tony's jingoistic mental breakdown, nor does he frame it with self-righteous condemnation; politics is rendered subordinate to creativity, as it always should be. Nina Power, in her recent review of Luke Conway’s Liberal Bullies: Inside the Mind of the Authoritarian Left, writes:

Living with incompleteness, curiosity, questioning and epistemic humility — which we must do if we are to understand anything at all — is painful for the authoritarian, who seeks certainty and a black-and-white world: good person, bad person, correct idea, wrong idea. Authoritarians “really, really dislike uncertainty”, Conway writes.

Eschewing ambiguity and ambivalence, authoritarians use simpler language than non-authoritarians, and their frameworks (Critical Race Theory for example) reduce everyone to “oppressor” and “victim”, which, as Conway points out, is self-defeating and wildly reductive.

Satire should be nuanced, ambivalent, and inquisitive if it is to adequately address the complex and messy nature of reality. Market Garden's 'Flag', a taster for the sophomore album Here We Go Again, could not have been released at a more appropriate time. Much like contemporary Britain itself, Market Garden's music is bleak, surreal, but not entirely bereft of hope; Tony Garden may not be the hero we wanted, but he could be the anti-hero we need.