ALBUM REVIEW: I’ve Felt Better – Dinosaur Pile-Up
In 2025, DINOSAUR PILE-UP tells us they’ve felt better. Unfortunately for them, they’ve also sounded better. In fact, in 2019, they sounded the best they ever had, following the release of their previous record, Celebrity Mansions – an album that saw their flavour of alcohol and antidepressant-addled adulthood-adolescence ascend to atmospheric heights. It was a welcome return to form, following Eleven Eleven’s peculiar nods to ROYAL BLOOD, that saw the band tighter, louder, and screaming with genuine conviction. Sadly, the world had other plans for a band that otherwise seemed destined for the fame and fortune they had been coveting for almost a decade. A combination of pandemic shutdowns and catastrophic health issues (more on this to follow) forced the Leeds trio to put the brakes on. The resulting album, I’ve Felt Better, is an admirable feat considering the circumstances of its inception, but is ultimately still dressing its wounds, albeit proudly.
So what happened? The huge disclaimer behind I’ve Felt Better’s tortured conception stems from the Herculean battle between frontman Matt Bigland and a diagnosis of Ulcerative Colitis. Bigland’s struggle was nothing short of war-like – spanning multiple years and covering numerous victories, losses, pandemic-driven isolation, and an unlikely discovery in love. At its best, I’ve Felt Better extracts the essence of Bigland’s turmoil, his crippling seclusion from the world around him, screaming through gritted teeth at his inability to simply ‘get better.’ In 2019, Celebrity Mansions rode a perfect storm, dropping just under a year before worldwide shutdown, and gaining a second life where its knack for escapism and general ‘fuck-it’ attitude was welcome medicine for a poorly planet. Like its predecessor, then, I’ve Felt Better’s strength lies in its source material.
Coming swinging from the gate, the album’s opening moments, including ‘Bout To Lose It, Sick Of Being Down, and the title track, easily join the trio’s greatest hits. They all receive the ‘rough cut’ production treatment – giving the same acerbic crunch you’d expect from playing the violin with a toothpick – while calamity strikes in the drum & bass department with healthy doses of brain-rattling back-end. There’s no doubt that I’ve Felt Better sounds fantastic.
Quasimodo Melonheart, and Sunflower bring unexpected joy towards the record’s closing moments. The former is an endearing bout of unlikely love, likely drawing on the respite found among Bigland’s days of ill-health through Kate, a virtual transatlantic relationship that sounds as life-saving as his inordinate amount of prescribed steroids. Meanwhile, Sunflower, a bouncy, chorus-driven screamer that could easily be argued as an album highlight, delivers an uplifting lesson of growth through a willingness to accept difficult changes – a rare moment of genuine motivation from a genre that is too easily overlooked for authentic sentiment.
It is here that we reach a crossroad – the moment I’ve Felt Better is demoted from great to good. The issues begin when things stray back onto the band’s well-beaten path of ‘being a screw up,’ ‘being a social loser,’ ‘being a small-time rockstar,’ and broadly bemoaning anything and everything that holds a mirror to their self-diagnosed lack of success. The message is harmless – but it’s dreadfully tired. Strangely, despite landing nine years after their first venture, DINOSAUR PILE-UP actually perfected this formula with Celebrity Mansions and arguably left no crumbs to be re-assembled on a later project. Sadly, tracks like Love’s the Worst, Punk Kiss, and My Way feel like the fat trimmings deemed unworthy to see the light of 2019’s release. The riff-writing is noticeably less memorable, as is the band’s traversal of the tracks from start to finish, and overall, the album’s middle act is left bereft of replay value. Besides, it also leaves Sunflower’s sentiment, which challenges listeners to accept the associated challenges of growth, feeling oddly tone deaf when DINOSAUR PILE-UP are unwilling to follow their own advice.
Ridding themselves of the album’s filler, DINOSAUR PILE-UP could have delivered a sensational snack-sized EP. In what could have been a keyhole look at the toils of Bigland’s journey to recovery, and presented as entries from a diary of intense hardship, the reality is an unfortunate case of ‘What if?’ from a band whose exponential growth seemed all but certain. I’ve Felt Better is a good album, but that’s not that great. While we can all take enormous relief from the trio’s good health and exciting live show prospects, where no doubt even the album’s lesser efforts will surely come alive, it’s hard not to be left feeling this particular dinosaur succumbed to its meteor long ago.
Rating: 6/10
I’ve Felt Better is out now via Mascot Records.
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