Grunge is back, riding on the young shoulders of Dinosaur Pile-Up’s debut LP.
Dinosaur Pile-Up – Growing Pains
RockOSaurus Says:
Dinosaur Pile-Up kick off their debut with the exactly the kind of material which has brought them so many ‘next big thing’ column inches. Chugging slightly downtuned guitars drive forward the excellent album opening 1-2 combo of Birds & Planes and Barce-loner, both nicely polished heavy handed rock which is equally attractive to the pop and rock crowds.
When they lever themselves away from this winning formula just for the sake of variety, the cracks start to appear. Never That Together is plagued by a lethargic riff, Broken Knee and Hey Man are almost the same song, both plodding along to the loud/quiet structure.
Early days singles My Rock n’ Roll and Traynor reappear towards the back end of the album which ups the ante once more, before DP-U commit an act of sheer idiocy! Album closer All Around The World contains a barely listenable 2 minutes of amp reverb buzz! I thought I had contracted Tinnitus!!
Growing Pains is a solid debut album from these Grunge Revivalists. It’s not likely to spark a full scale nostalgic revolution, but the high points will definitely please those who were there the first time around.
Mr Flowers Says:
Despite the abundance of grunge, Nirvana and Foo Fighters influences, there just aren’t enough good songs on Growing Pains to spark a British-based genre revival. The album starts off well enough with Birds & Planes showcasing their best qualities: a thudding riff, great use of pauses and the rock scream out. And while Barce-loner follows the same blueprint it’s unfortunately also where some of the lyrical cracks start to show through.
Later, they start to show a tendency to drift into a repetitive drone when they don’t have the crutch of a catchy guitar part, which is part of the reason the songs Never That Together and Broken Knee seem much longer than they actually are. The self-indulgent, slow burning Hey You is also mostly a flop, finally getting going with a minute to go long after when I suspect most listeners will have fallen asleep.
They fare better when they get back to what they’re good at with the faster paced, punkier guitar riffs on Love To Hate Me and Traynor, which in the end just balances out an album which is more of a promising debut than a new dawning for grunge.
RockOSaurus: 7/10
MrFlowers: 6/10
DoesItRock Overall Score: 6.5/10
Listen to Dinosaur Pile-Up – Growing Pains now on Spotify!
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