There are many reasons to quickly fall in love with Slime City: all three members of the Glasgow band are called Michael and have surnames that are mostly descriptive (Michael M, Michael Guitar, and Michael Drums); they make music videos entirely from Shutterstock images; they have a three foot tall cutout of “evil” Tom from MySpace on stage with them at gigs; on Black Friday they increased the price of all their merch as a veritable middle finger to the broken capitalist system and “in celebration of the banality of consumerism”; they made a synth built into a leather shoe (appropriately titled in all caps as “THE SHOE”) that they play during their live shows and sell replicas of at their merch tables. The band lean into the goofiness, but are sincere about their desire to create (“We’re up here doing this because our hearts tell us to do it,” Michael M entreated at a recent album launch show in their home city). A good laugh is always better when there’s real heart behind the joke.
And then there’s the music. Self-described as “existential nerd rock from Glasgow for people who like both sighing & fighting,” Slime City create tunes for the brawl and for the remorseful hangover afterwards. Taking cues from Art Brut, Devo, and Future of the Left (fittingly they’ve toured alongside mclusky in the past), their music is pointed, fiery, full of punchlines, and catchy as hell. It’s no surprise either, as Slime City have been working at it for the past 20 years; the members previously made up three quarters of the band We Are the Physics during their minor moment of indie fame during their peak from 2005-2015.
Since then, the three Michaels reformed as Slime City and have aimed themselves at resetting the dial completely, making and releasing music on their own terms. Their 2023 debut Death Club captured all the ontological, acerbic wit and singalong choruses you could hope for, making them a lot of people’s new favourite band.
Their new album, National Record of Achievement, follows on felicitously from Death Club. It’s very funny in all the right places, full of sharp jabs and tiny jokes that have already become new call and response bits at the band’s gigs. It’s loud and fervent, guitars, bass, and drums (and THE SHOE, of course) locking in and becoming a seamless unit of noisy joyful rock. It’s the sound of a band who don’t settle for half-assing it; they have a loyal fanbase but still seem eager to prove themselves worthy of your time. Songs are stuffed with details (disembodied computer voices going “plus minus multiply divide” on the sassy and aerobic “You Do The Math(s)”, the itchy and restless guitar riffs bleeding into the mix on “Earth Gets Hot”) which invites the close listening you may need to do to discern and catch all of lead singer Michael M’s lyrics.
If there’s a consistent gripe it is that some words do get lost in the mix, be it from being buried underneath snarling guitar and bass, or from their exasperated delivery. The remedy is getting a copy of the record on vinyl to get a lyric sheet to follow alongside, but equally there are more quotable lyrics across the album’s 12 tracks than some bands would hope to pen in their entire career. “Remember when you said be careful on that internet / The same thing applies to you,” he sings with a “oh how the tables have turned” smugness on the fiercely catchy “Trigger The Dads”. On the demotivational anthem “Never Stop Giving Up” he warns “Don’t fear the stigma of healing / It’s masked in self-flaggelation” while on the emo-tinged “Grief Is A Ghost” he reckons with existence and leaving a mark on the world as he rues “Like a ripple in a bedsheet / But I left an imprint but now that’s gone too.”
That sincerity the band approach their music with has always found its way into the music; the existential dread is real and sometimes palpable. “The Mona Lisa Isn’t Even Very Good” is worth it for the title alone, but it serves up a slice of self-reflection as Michael M muses over seeing ourselves in the world around us. The stormy opening title track is a takedown of the superfluous bureaucracy we put ourselves through “in the grim space and time between puberty and adult responsibility.” (The album title and art are fashioned on the like-named folder given to secondary school pupils in the UK in the 1990s and early 2000s which documented various grades and extra-curricular activities. The band included genuine copies of National Records of Achievement folders as part of a pre-order for the album.)
Closing track “Lord, Make Me Chaste, But Not Yet” is an introspective and gradually soaring finale, gliding by on a cloud of synths. Even though it sounds like it’s written from the perspective of a teenager addled by la petite mort, it’s a notable change of tone and pace, showing a band who want to reach outwards and not just go for sugary highs.
National Record is best enjoyed as a blunt force object though. Its best laughs come from the ones that are crowd pleasers through and through: when “Millenial Pause” takes itself very literally; the unexpectedly lush orchestral coda on “This Song Costs £2000” where Michael M sings “Thank you for the 0.00001 pence”; the Spaghetti Western guitar solo (complete with bullet ricochets and whipcracks) on “The Mona Lisa Isn’t Even Very Good”; or how a gleeful clap and sing-along moment comes from chanting the title of “My Meat Prison Is Not Significant” over and over.
Sure, some energy wavers around the midsection of the album, but it’s to be expected with a record that can sometimes sound like a mix of Red Stripe and Irn-Bru. And yeah, the band’s debut was grittier and more bluntly funny, but fans have had two years to befriend those songs. Plus such comparisons are just pedantry in the face of having a good time. The tracks on National Record are exciting additions to their catalogue to distract from the world on fire around us; they’re just 12 more reasons to quickly fall in love with Slime City.
