Dinosaur Pile-Up - 'Growing Pains'

     Dinosaur Pile-Up, originating from Leeds, are an alternative rock band made up of front-man Matt Bigland, Harry Johns on bass and drummer Mike Sheils. ‘Growing Pains’, the band’s debut album was released October 2010, and have released two singles from it - ‘Birds and Planes’ and ‘Mona Lisa’
     DPU has a very distinct sound - although their music varies between sounding a lot like bands such as The Foo Fighters, Pulled Apart By Horses and Biffy, Matt Bigland’s vocals are very difficult to mistake for another’s. Maybe because they are influenced by a lot of 90’s alternative rock bands like Weezer, their music is very distinguishable amongst other current bands.
     ‘Growing Pains’ has one flaw to it - a lot of the songs sound the same, and are therefore fairly easy to forget. Listening to it without a track listing in front of you, it can be quite difficult to remember which song you’re listening to. Maybe it’s just my bad memory, but I rate an album by how memorable it’s tracks are - if you can listen to an album and forget about it the next day, it’s not a very good album.
     Of course, there are some easily recognisable tracks on ‘Growing Pains’ - ‘Hey You’ in particular is a gorgeous song, completely different from anything else on the record, but still with the distinct DPU sound. ‘Love To Hate Me’ is another highlight, with powerful guitar riffs and a chorus written for crowds to sing along to. It’s actually quite difficult to pick out a bad track from ‘Growing Pains’, because all the songs are actually great - it’s just a shame all the songs are on the one album, because the band would’ve probably benefited from more slow, acoustic songs to really bring out the heavier, more raucous tracks.
     If you’re looking for a different kind of band to the one’s we have to endure day-in-day-out (JLS and J-Beebz, I’m talking to you), definitely give DPU a listen. As far as debut albums go, ‘Growing Pains’ is a very strong one, and promises bigger and better things to come from Dinosaur Pile-Up. If they can record a second album just as big as ‘Growing Pains’, this band are in for a hell of a career.


For fans of: Foo Fighters, Biffy Clyro, Pulled Apart By Horses


Rating: 7/10