Brother - Time Machine

Hailing from Slough and signed to Geffen Records, Brother are being touted as one of the hottest new things in music at the moment. With coverage in The Sun (featuring some amazing caricatures drawn by the band’s front-man Leonard Newell), they are on a swift rise to fame and their song Time Machine, available as a free download from their website certainly backs up the hype.

There chorus’s are pure Oasis, all ‘Love is a time machine, bringing you back to me...’, epic and anthemic. It’s fair to say Brother definitely have some of that magic Gallagher swagger to them and they use every scrap of it available to them to pack into their music. They’re also their own distinct band though, the verses in particular marking out their own particular identity. It’s still full of classic rock n’ roll vibes but injected with a hip sense of the here and now. With the Brit-pop legends of the past behind us, Brother strive to create something new and exciting. And with Time Machine, they’re most definitely succeeding.

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.

Candidate23 - One For You

Hailing from Runcorn on the outskirts of Liverpool and with their band name a reference to post-punk legends Joy Division, this teenage five-piece mix youthful energy with a keen sense of melody on their feisty debut single One For You.  Lead singer Will Hayes’ vocals are full of emotion; lines like “Never look back” and “Put your past away” surely striking a chord with all of us.  So often song lyrics seem cheap and disposable, a cheesy mish-mash of clichés; but here, we’re made to feel every word.   And then there’s the guitar hooks that bands twice their age would be proud of.  All the ingredients for a brilliant song are here and One For You represents a stellar beginning for the band.  They even have a fascinating link to pop royalty; drummer Jono Tringham is the cousin of Girls Aloud’s very own Nicola Roberts. Talent clearly runs in the family.

The band describe their sound as a blend between Oasis and the Stereophonics, and it’s a pretty spot-on comparison – Candidate23 carry that same boyish swagger paired with the intelligence and lyrical skill to mark them out as more than just the next bunch if indie clones.  In a world where young rock groups are ten-a-penny, Candidate23 have the skill and musicianship to lift them a cut above the rest, their songs playing loud and clear to the masses.