There are many words for a man like Matt Bigland, but slacker is not one of them. This second album from Leeds-based grunge-pop trio Dinosaur Pile-Up was once again recorded entirely by the frontman himself in various remote studios around the country. Now they’re back together (with new bassist James Sacha replacing Harry Johns) and ready to tour some brand spanking new face melting tunes for the Great British public. With this in mind, I’m not sure whether to encourage you to get the record or warn you to stay well back, lest your ears fall clean off your head before your brain explodes. But if you want to take that risk then, by all means, be my guest. It will probably have been worth it in the end.
Straight from the get go, you’ll have Bigland screaming in your ear accompanied by high-octane booming guitars and drums thundering and crashing around you like a perfect storm, otherwise known as ‘Arizona Waiting’. Drums also take a prominence in the more subdued but far from lame rock ballad ‘Derail’, leading the track towards towering choruses and an explosive finish.
If fast-paced killer riffs and bouncy pop beats is your thing then highlights should include the amazing ‘Peninsula’ with its sing-a-long choruses (“Want you to know, I don’t care what you say!”) and guitar licks so insane it sounds as if the instrument has a mind of its own. ‘Heather’s manic bassline will grab you by the throat and won’t let go even when you’ve surrendered. Then a little later on there’s ‘Draw A Line’… Remember the Mad Capsule Markets? Well, take those crazy j-rock hooks, pour a couple dozen cans of Red Bull over them and you’re still no closer to how good this track is. It’s easy to predict this’ll be a definite live highlight on their upcoming tour.
There are, of course, a couple of slightly less brilliant tracks on the record such as ‘White T-Shirt and Jeans’ and ‘The Way We Came’. Pretty decent tracks in their own right but, in the context of a mostly kick-ass collection of songs, they’re pretty poor in comparison. If anything, they serve as a little breather, breaking the album into two halves of sheer guitar pop greatness.
The first we heard of this album was ‘Lip Hook Kiss’, uploaded to SoundCloud by the band before the release of ‘Arizona Waiting’ as the first single and, boy, was it a magnificent sign of things to come with fuzz-tastic guitars and Bigland’s signature dish of “heavy metal and love songs”. And, just as with ‘Growing Pains’, the record ends with an extended anthemic rock beast of a track, this time adopting the title of the album itself.
Whilst their debut, as its title suggests, saw the band grow into themselves, with Bigland developing and honing the band’s sound himself in a small live-in studio for months on end, ‘Nature Nurture’ sees himself and his band finally come into their own. Despite what the otherwise insanely hyper moments on the album may suggest, it has naturally taken a mature progression in both the music itself and the recording. Now, with great caution and reckless abandon in equal measure, I urge you to go forth and listen to this record immediately!
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