“Bout To Lose It” starts with a nightmarish scream, and immediately Dinosaur Pile-Up are back. That is to say, they’re back digging deep and finding some catharsis in their music. “Would anyone be worse off if I weren’t alive?” asks singer Matt Bigland. The answer is yes, of course — but you don’t think straight when you’re thinking like that.
Bigland certainly wasn’t when he admitted himself to hospital, and the title track takes you straight to that place. The press release lays it bare:
“At his worst, he suffered rapid weight loss, internal bleeding, and proliferation of sores in his mouth and over his body, which continued to grow worse. Sections of his tongue were removed for investigation – while he was conscious. Most unnervingly, the doctors seemed to be panicking, unable to stop his throat collapsing in on itself.”
There were six people on that ward. Three of them never came out. Matt did. And this first album in six years is his — and our — reward.
DPU were going to quit if their last album, “Celebrity Mansions,” had failed. It didn’t (basically because it was brilliant, but specifically because the sensational “Back Foot” was a hit in the US). And let’s be honest — if you didn’t know they were English, you’d assume they were the latest thing in America anyway.
Yet there’s a charming self-deprecation about the band. They reckon they’ll never be the latest hot shit in the music industry. It’s almost like they don’t realise how good “Sick Of Being Down” is. All kinds of ’90s vibes here, but the one I can’t shake is Stone Temple Pilots.
The quite superb — and utterly defiant — “My Way” comes from a similar place as the aforementioned “…Foot,” but rather than the trappings of rock stardom, this one settles scores. “Quitting’s not my style, so fuck it” almost dares you to take them on. And if you’re going to, you’d best come heavy.
Speaking of heavy, DPU are deceptively so. “Big Dogs” thunders its way in, while “Big You And Me” swaggers and belongs in arenas.
They’re capable of making enormous-sounding music, but they do it entirely on their own terms, as “Love’s The Worst” underlines. Put it this way — if the band fails, they’re not getting jobs writing Hallmark cards anytime soon.
There’s a sense of foreboding to the start of “Quasimodo Lemonheart,” but it’s actually a moment of joy. Not unlike Feeder at their very best, it tells the tale of Bigland falling in love and marrying his girlfriend as he recovered.
It changes the vibe slightly, and “Sunflower” actually sounds like a summer anthem.
So catchy are these songs at their best that you sometimes don’t even realise just how dark they are. “Unfamiliar” is a prime example — so euphoric does it sound.
But as if to remind themselves that happiness is fleeting, the closer, “I Don’t Love Nothing And Nothing Loves Me,” takes you almost back to the start of the journey. That said, “I’ve Felt Better” documents a period of life that probably no one here wants to return to.
“Nothing’s ever gonna change,” it goes — but it does, and it has, and these 12 songs are proof.
You could, possibly, argue that a few things have remained the same: Dinosaur Pile-Up are innovative, original, and brilliant.
Rating: 9/10
