LIVE REVIEW: Mickey 9s, Static Sky, Queen Margaret Union, Glasgow, 04/10/2025
Glasgow’s own Mickey 9s play one of their most ambitious shows to date at the atmospheric Queen Margaret Union just off Byres Road in the West End of the city. Here is a band that have a very passionate fanbase and they are all out in force tonight on this Saturday night … what could possibly go wrong? After the release of Mickey 9s fifth album Uncanny Valley in July 2025 and the fact that it is ten years now since the debut album release Party Manifesto in 2015, we have been promised to hear that particular album in it’s entirety, one thing is for sure: we are in for a raucous night of genre defying electro/punk/rock music. So who are Mickey 9s? There is a particular mystery surrounding them, they formed in 2007 and are St.Cool (vocals), Ants (guitar), Dave ‘one man rave’ (bass) and Ross Ross Ross (drums), unfortunately we know little else about the band members!
Tonight’s support Static Sky have come up from Ayrshire (Ayr & Cumnock actually) and are given a decent forty-five minutes on stage to impress the ever-growing crowd – and that they did – at times we are getting vibes of Wunderhorse or Fontaines D.C. from vocalist Marc James. They played at the Pavilion Festival in May on one of the smaller stages as the mighty Manchester band James came down to Ayr for the first time. The most recent Static Sky release is 14, taking us back to the days of our youth as the band reminisce about another time while Human Touch gets a decent crowd reaction, they have more than a few fans up from Ayrshire tonight. Pink (Pink) Skies is another one we enjoyed and the remainder were mostly unreleased tracks, we are so glad to have turned up nice and early to see Static Sky, we hope to see them live again. 7/10
As we wait in the bar queue St.Cool and his Mickey 9s band take to the stage at 8.40pm, the upstairs balcony is shut off tonight making for a more intense atmosphere downstairs, the frontman owns the stage immediately as he bounds up and down while breaking into some funky dance moves, he seems to have more energy than the other band members put together.
Maradona from the Uncanny Valley album is one of the best of the set as the band pay tribute to the Argentinian football legend, the quirky lyrics are so laugh out loud and the song is perhaps a dig at any England fans who are old enough to remember the 1986 World Cup and the ‘hand of God’ incident … as if they need reminding! Charlie is another of the standouts with the lyrical content being maybe a little close to the bone and Ammunition has a chap invited on to the stage wearing a gas mask … this just goes to prove that anything goes at a Mickey 9s show. Some of the crowd around us were dancing from the first minute to the last and no wonder, the music is highly charged and it is a Saturday night after all, Straight White Male gets one of the best crowd reactions of the set and prompts a mass singalong, for a home city show the band couldn’t have wished for a better crowd.
Psycho Control whips the crowd into a frenzy with the opening line “fucking yowdy” which can translate as another way of saying hello in Glasgow while RANG WI ME is great to hear live, this is actually our first time seeing Mickey 9s after a recommendation and we are glad to have taken the opportunity. Most in the room are singing along to the opening lines of RANG WI ME “I’m an animal living in the wrong enclosure, living in the wrong environment” to the delight of the band. St.Cool announces near the end of the show “our next album is going to be industrial metal tunes, we hope you enjoy it!” Mickey 9s don’t play that many gigs, the only other one they have booked for this year is at EBGBS in Liverpool on 15th November. The night had been so enjoyable until we approached the car in the rain and realized we had a parking ticket … thanks GCC! 9/10
Written by: Alan Brown
