First off, there’s no connection between OMJ’s much-loved KOTS and this. He’s not the titular attractive nutter. Did he get his handle from the band? You’d have to ask him.

When I was living in Manchester in the late 80s one band that there was a buzz around for a while was King of the Slums. They weren’t part of anything like baggie, weren’t Factory, or such as that. If I had to compare them to anyone in terms of how they were seen I suppose they had a little of being Fall-type outsiders, without sounding much like them.
Peel played them a bit, I saw them a couple of times at, I think Fagin’s and then the Boardwalk. What stood out was the verbal and physical energy of Charley Keigher and Sarah Curtis’s electric violin. (I just had to look the latter’s name up) Anyone who reckons violin equals sedate and tasteful can think again. Brutal, Velvets, especially John Cale-influenced, manic, compelling. Keigher also had something of Morrissey and Thom Yorke’s gift of taking clichés and everyday sayings and weaving a kind of spiky poetry out of them, although to very different-sounding backings
They released various EPs that were collected on the album I bought, Barbarous English Fayre, which has at least two outstanding tracks: the one I’ve chosen here and Bombs Away on Harpurhey. I thought there was a fair chance they’d have decent success and establish themselves on the indie scene. They were filmed for SnubTV performing Fanciable Headcase, and people thought that would give them the impetus they needed. But they never fit in, not baggy, not psychedelic, not shoegaze, not that Pixies/Dinosaur Jr/Sonic Youth proto-grunge. Also they weren’t by any stretch photogenic (see the SnubTV video) and I guess in the final analysis they didn’t have enough really good songs

They split early 90s but reformed about 12 or so years ago without Sarah Curtis, and released new stuff. I actually wasn’t aware of that until I saw that Keigher had sadly died, which was a couple of years back now.

This is a really, really good track and deserves to be better known.