Overcoming life-threatening illness and finding fresh perspective on true priorities, English alt. rock supremos Dinosaur Pile-Up roar back from the brink with defiant fifth album I’ve Felt Better…

There were six people in the ward the second time that Matt Bigland admitted himself to hospital. Three of them didn’t make it out alive. Life is short. It’s fragile. It can end in an instant. That’s the harsh truth with which the Dinosaur Pile-Up frontman has wrestled since losing his father suddenly at eight years of age, the stark reality that shook him into picking up a guitar and chasing his rock star dreams in the first place. Because tomorrow is never guaranteed. When ulcerative colitis left Matt in critical care in early 2021, however, he began to think again about what it’s really all about.

“You think you’re halfway through life, then you realise you might be right at the end,” he smiles, today. “Being in that room was scary. I felt incredibly vulnerable. I had no control. But hearing people in the final hours of their lives forced me to think about what would happen if I were to die. What was I leaving behind? What really mattered while I was here? What bullshit did I waste my time worrying about? What had true value to me? I’ve always understood that life can be fleeting and fragile – how important it is to take every chance – but I’d never processed it quite like that…”

‘I’ve felt better…’ started as a makeshift mantra. Unwilling to sift through the layers of trauma with every friend who checked-in to see how he was doing – indeed, often unable to speak through a mouth filled with centimetre-wide sores – Matt found himself defaulting to that wry, understated three-word response. After four years of repetition and rattling around his head, those words are reclaimed as the title to Dinosaur Pile-Up’s defiant fifth album: 12 songs to draw a line under a half-decade of sickness and struggle, a distillation of his agonising uncertainty and self-analysis.

“People need clarity about what happened,” Matt explains. “It’s been cathartic to lay it all out.”

Struggle. Vulnerability. Pain. Resilience. Love. It’s been a hell of a journey. In many ways, brilliant, shapeshifting opener – and lead single – ‘Bout To Lose It begins at the end, dropping us into the shoes of a frontman chomping at the bit to get back to business but low on confidence, unsure if fans still give a damn after so much time away: ‘I guess I’m back on the edge / Maybe I never left! / Would have been nice if you cared / But what did I expect?!’ He needn’t worry. Bursting with attitude, I’ve Felt Better’s hook-laden title-track is both confirmation that DPU haven’t lost a step and subtle expansion of the broader themes of strength in the face of adversity, transforming from lament for lost momentum to damning critique of a pop-cultural landscape gone mad.

Sick Of Being Down is a grungy, mesmeric treatise on the exhaustion of balancing mental health that takes us farther back to Matt’s lowest point, and finds empowerment in how he made it out.  It’s barnstorming highlight My Way that fully reignites the swagger of 2019 smash single Back Foot, though, with a hip hop-inflected ode to staying true to oneself and staying angry at a twisted modern music industry that criminally underpays its creatives: ‘ If you spin this track twenty million times / Then I maybe make a buck / I can use that to buy my groceries, lucky I don’t eat a lot…’

Flash back to 2018. Ten years of chasing opportunity and betting big on every chance had built Dinosaur Pile-Up into one of the most beloved alt. rock bands in the UK. It had also left them flat broke, physically and mentally drained, and without a label to release imminent fourth album Celebrity Mansions. Between Matt, bassist Jim Cratchley and drummer Mike Sheils it was agreed that Celebrity... would be make-or-break. Failure would mean calling it quits. The rock gods were smiling, though, as DPU signed to Parlophone less than a month out of the studio for a summer 2019 release, lining up major festival dates and North American support slots with The Offspring and Sum 41 through to the end of the year. They were soaring – until COVID stalled the world….

“2020 looked like it was going to be an insane year,” Matt sighs, ruefully. “To have that taken from us was a real kick in the nuts. We were on this amazing upward trajectory. And it was just reset.”

Little did he know that it was about to be reset again – and again.  Already diagnosed with Crohn’s disease, Matt’s immunosuppressant steroid treatments meant his lockdown was subject to strict self-isolation, further battering threadbare physical and mental health. Striking up a relationship online with Karen Dió of Brazilian punks Violet Soda was a shard of gold in a sea of grey. Her UK visit in October 2020 one of the few moments of real relief. Maddeningly, Matt’s trip to her South American homeland at New Year’s 2021 would be cut short: worsening health forcing a return to the UK and setting him on a lonely spiral towards some of the darkest days of his entire life.

“People don’t relate things like health crises with being a dude in a band,” he stresses the sense of isolation that came with the ordeal. “We’re more associated with rocking out and having a great time – even more so with today’s Instagram culture. At my lowest point, I couldn’t have felt further from being that dude onstage playing a big crowd. That was difficult to rationalise. I was skin and bones, wrecked, feeling like I was going to die, wondering what had happened to me and why.”

Unwilling to portray an image that didn’t truly reflect what he was going through, Matt dropped off social media entirely. It added another level of separation from the outside world, most of whom had no idea the nightmare he was living. February 2021 was the first time he’d been admitted to hospital, a stay cut short due to a lack of beds. “I was sent home with permission to self-administer morphine,” he crumples his brow. “It felt dangerous. I could have killed myself with that syringe.”

The rapid weight-loss, internal bleeding and proliferation of sores in his mouth and over his body continued to grow worse. Readmission to hospital was the only option. There were endless blood-tests. Sections of his tongue were removed for investigation – while he was conscious. Most unnervingly, the doctors seemed to be panicking, unable to stop his throat collapsing in on itself. 

“I remember being taken out in a wheelchair for an X-ray at one point,” Matt recalls. “The orderly left me alone in the corridor on my way there and I realised how few people knew where I was or understood the out-of-control the situation I was in. So I called my UK manager Adam to chat. As soon as he picked up I just broke down. I had no idea what was happening, or what would happen next. It was the first time I’d cried in years. He cried, too, which really brought the situation home.”

Rather than wallowing in self-pity, Matt found enlightenment in the deepest shadow. 
“Lying in that hospital bed, my priorities shifted. I realised that the most important thing in my life was spending time with the people I love. Nothing else mattered. It was a kind of ego-death. I was lying there with people who were on the same plane as me one moment, and the next they were leaving it. I was freaking out about my own mortality, but also thinking ‘Wow, that’s it for them…’ Getting famous? Being cool? None of it seemed significant after that. Strutting around backstage at festivals like a dick was no longer on my list of priorities. I’m not sure how important all that other ‘band stuff’ ever was to me, but from then all I cared about was making music and living my life.”

Recovery was not a straight line. Neither was picking up again with Dinosaur Pile-Up. Return shows at Reading & Leeds 2021 saw Matt still swollen from the massive Methylprednisolone dose that had gotten him out of hospital. Their long-delayed Kentish Town Forum headline on March 23 2022 was more impactful. Recording was completed piece-by-piece when Matt was fit, with four producers – trusted friend Larry Hibbitt, Swedish master Martin Terefe, American songwriter Scott Stevens, Hastings’ Mike Horner – across a total of six studios between May 2022 and late 2024. DPU would change record-deal, too, when restructuring saw many of their most vocal champions at Parlophone move on, and they amicably jumped to renowned independent label Mascot.

“Time gives you perspective,” Matt smiles. “I normally take a ‘long time’ to make a record, but that means between two and four months. This has been years. In his book The Creative Act, Rick Rubin explains that the first time you really hear a song is when you play it to someone else. I had that opportunity on repeat here, and these songs are extremely well honed.  Plus, hearing how they sound essentially the same no matter where I’m recording – with different gear, in different studios – has underlined that I’m really driving the ship. It was a challenge mentally, physically and literally. I effectively recorded that record three times. But I’m so proud of how it turned out.”
The finished article speaks for itself. Matt relishes the “power in positivity” of larger-than-life bangers like Big Dogs – a gleeful takedown of ass-backwards celebrity freebie culture where the richest and most successful always ‘eat for free’ while needy nobodies scrabble for scraps. Equally, he’s happy to lay bare his deepest vulnerabilities, as on heartbreaking closer I don’t Love Nothing And Nothing Loves Me: ‘Loser / Weirdo / Screw up / Freak / Fuck it / I guess / That’s just / Me...’

Real love shines through, in the end. Motivating himself to get out of hospital, Matt kept a photo of a wedding ring on his phone and promised himself that marrying Karen would be his reward for pulling through. That promise was fulfilled in April 2022, and a thread of romance runs from their partnership through the heart of the record. Punk Kiss, for instance, started out as a portrait of kids having fun at DPU’s 2016 tour with Basement, but metamorphosed into a tribute to the teenage longing we’ve all felt for the girls (and guys) at the rock show. Quasimodo Melonheart casts Matt (always self-conscious about his stooped posture) as the lovelorn hunchback chasing his fair maiden, with elaborate instrumentation worthy of Notre Dame and guest vocals from Karen herself. Best of all, Love’s The Worst wrings arena-ready pop-punk triumph from the pain and anger of being cheated on in a previous relationship that had to die for his true love to flourish.

Ultimately, this album seeing the light of day is a huge part of Matt’s happily ever after. Having relocated with Karen to St Leonards on England’s south-east coast and transitioned from a reliance on steroids and biologics to an effective herbal alternative, Matt is more focused on work, home and life’s simple pleasures than he’s ever been. And all that has underlined why music matters.

“This feels like a ‘Fuck it, I’m here!’ kind of a record,” he signs-off. “It’s not about whether I might get to be rich and famous anymore. It’s about being excited for people to get to hear my songs. I want to be free of the bullshit of how people perceive me – or us – and what it means to be a ‘cool band’. I’m proud that we’re still here as a band at all. I’m proud that I’m still here as a person. And I’m just so stoked that I’m still able to make music. That’s what I want to do. That’s why I’m here...”