Dinosaur Pile-Up - The Most Powerful EP In The Universe EP Review

Review of Dinosaur Pile-Up's EP The Most Powerful EP In The Universe released through Friends Vs Records.

This Dinosaur Pile-Up EP should most definitely come supplied with a warning sticker. The Parental Advisory clan can rest easy a little while; there is nothing here that will send little Jimmy on a killing spree when he should be doing GCSE Geography. But rather, the sticker should carry the words 'Best Consumed In A Cultural Vacuum'.

That way, you see, you can enjoy TMPEITU for what it is: a glorious, brutal, melodic sucker-punch of a record. Heart-breaking and face-breaking (if a little rule abiding) in equal measure. That won't happen though, will it? Because we're all too cynical. Every single one of us over the age of about 26 has seen too much and heard too much. And we're not that old, right? So we remember too much. And we don't like history repeating itself. We are programmed to favour progress above all else. And progress comes at us faster and faster as the years roll by. And we pretend we never liked those records in the first place. And we pretend we can't understand why anyone would want to emulate that sound.

So let's lay the bare bones out: Dinosaur Pile-Up sound a lot like their forebears. Influences are sewn pretty firmly onto the sleeves of their plaid shirts an' all that. Lemonheads. Nirvana. Foo Fighters. Erm, Weezer, even. There's no running from it, there's no hiding from it, there's not really a lot of weight in discussing it (as we have spent a good couple of hundred words doing here).

So we'll talk about the fun stuff. Like the fact that the title of the tracks that show up in iTunes (hah! Didn't have that in the '90s, did we.?) are completely different to the ones on the sleeve of the promo disc (which actually seem to bear some resemblance to the song lyrics). Cheeky scamps or incompetent bastards? Oh, nevermind. So, the song that I will call 'Opposites Attract' is the kind of song that makes you fall in love with a guy when the sun's out - it's the soundtrack to a picnic when the picnic basket contains nothing but cheap beer and cheaper gin: mid-speed self deprecation, continual build-up and breakdown, screeching guitars and shuddering drums. And 'Melanin', presuming it wasn't stolen from Brody Dalle's own personal songbook, is a box of Thornton's finest confectionaries, in sonic form. I won't labour the comparison.

Of course, the next logical step for the record label is to gather together a bunch of baggy-jumper wearing 9-year olds, stick some knackered guitars in their hands and call them Dinosaur Jr. Pile-Up. Hopefully we'll get a few more years out of these guys first, though.

Hayley Avron