Bikini Test Failure - Fleecing The Easily Pleased

Some days I wish I could go back to the 90s. There was just a real special-something about the decade; maybe a little rough around the edges at times, but always enfused with that sheer joy of life. And Bikini Test Failure’s album Fleecing The Easily Pleased is full to the brim of that feeling, so much so that the first track is rather cheerily titled Yes, We Are Having A Good Time Now. The songs here are pure Blur and Lightning Seeds; packed with that anthemic sense of energy, pride and happiness. Jangly guitars and elegant touches of synths polish the sound off, front-man James’s vocals coming across like a modern-day Damon Albarn.

Tracks like Missing A Gene come across more like Oasis in one of their more gentle moments, full of that Brit-pop swagger. Bikini Test Failure’s real strength is recapturing that lost sound, revitalising it and unleashing it in a whole new era. It’s old sounds, but with new innovation – the album being remarkably consistent, keeping a flowing sense of continuity from end to start with nothing that ever really jars the listener. There’s a cutesy, quaint British-ness to all the tracks; a pretty home-made quality to tracks like Falling Apart that stands as a perfect counterpoint to the grander moments elsewhere on the album.

There’s even touches of Doves to their sound too, and hailing from Manchester too, there’s a real sense of the musical legacy of that great Northern city here. With soaring, radio-friendly choruses and a real sense of musicianship to the songs here, Fleecing The Easily Pleased, is an album that impresses from first listen and is sure to delight fans of the best in British alternative guitar music everywhere.