Bikini Body Make Post-Gutter-Skunk-Funk For The People

The volume of Scottish bands built upon seratingly funny lyricism truly makes one wonder if a career in stand-up pays even less than musical aspirations do, and would-be comedians turn to the music-going crowd in search of a paying audience. At least, those from Glasgow make you wonder – those from Edinburgh tend to hold a softer scalpel. Maybe generational wealth really does dilute one’s sense of humor from an early age, or perhaps even the sharpest of wordsmiths just can’t quite hear their thoughts over the bagpipes.

Of all the bands based in Scotland, Bikini Body makes the most convincing case for the career crossover. With a lyrical style built around making fun of other people (‘He’s got a voice that sends shivers down my spine/But when we get down to it he tastes more like Barefoot Wine’) and offhand political remarks, they’re the sort to soar amongst the impudent crowds of Glasgow’s live music scene.

As typical of this sort of comedy, the lyrics will land right amongst their target audience; and even those who don’t enjoy the music are very unlikely to leave a nasty comment on the band’s social media with a profile picture attached, because they very obviously will go there.

Their apparent grip on absurdist humor reveals itself not only in the lyricism, but also in the surrounding musical scaffolding: dredging up angular jabs from the funkier corners of their instruments, Bikini Body strives to serve ‘Post-Gutter-Skunk-Funk For The People’. Released in 2025, their debut EP ‘Weird Party’ – followed by ‘Weirder Party’ – a remixed cacophony of free-for-all of maracas and ripe guitar – established the band as the fully-realized, uncompromisable sort. ‘We don’t really want to sit in one genre. There is guitar at the core of it, but we like pulling in dance elements, noise – whatever fits.

Sometimes that means leaning into things that feel a bit cheesy or anthemic, but that’s part of the fun – letting it be sincere. There was one track where we almost changed a section because it sounded a bit too much like ‘Eye of the Tiger’, but that actually became my favorite part’, lead singer Vicky Kavanagh shared with me at a pre-show chat in Glasgow.

‘There is guitar at the core of it, but we like pulling in dance elements, noise, whatever fits. Sometimes that means leaning into things that feel a bit cheesy or anthemic, but that’s part of the fun – letting it be sincere.’

‘We came into music from pretty different angles – I hadn’t even really been in bands before, but we started sharing stuff, poetry, records, and it just clicked. We jammed for a couple of years and recorded early demos while still figuring out what we were. A lot of our influences are things we discovered young but didn’t fully understand at the time – like The Rapture – and then came back to later and it suddenly made sense. Same with bands like The Clash.’

While ‘Weird Party’ and ‘Weirder Party’ are the most recent releases of theirs, pre-COVID ‘Pond Life’ carries itself with a similar spoken-word tendency and rubber-punk forefront sound (with the exception of not wielding a cowbell as they do in later projects – I’m gonna need more of that). 

‘COVID kind of stalled things just as we were starting to play shows, but it also gave us time to reset and figure out what we actually wanted the project to be’, the band shared of the enforced hiatus. Although the post-COVID tracks are clearly more confident in their own style, the similar stylings suggest a process of refinement rather than a reinvention: their jaded brazenness and ‘mince-no-words’ philosophy should make Bikini Body sound too self-serious, but has always lent itself to airtight comedic delivery instead.