Dinosaur Pile-Up - Mona Lisa

Ahead of their album ‘Growing Pains’ finally seeing the light of day later this month, the Leeds trio’s latest blast of club-ready rock anthemia starts in fairly calm fashion, with Matt Bigland’s vocals drawing the listener in over a series of stop-start, almost-muted riffs.

Before long though, the reverb arrives, the pedals are torn a new arse, and ‘Mona Lisa’ kicks off good and proper. Dinosaur Pile-Up’s trademark mélange of aggression and melody is on display here to great effect once again, helped by an urgent, lasting chorus and frequent pace changes throughout. There continues to be something of a punked-up early-90s grunge feel to their work, but it doesn’t come across as an unpleasant time warp by any means.

As a single, the track deserves praise for managing to be accessible and ballsy in equal measure. While the momentum has been on the increase for this lot for a fair while now, ‘Mona Lisa’ seems to be a perfect indicator of what the lads do so well. For some, there may seem to be too much aping of Grohl, Schreifels and co, but for everyone else who misses a healthy dose of crossover noise in their lives, this will work wonders.