Four young Brisbane lads made waves in 2010 with their infectious summer hit, Honolulu. It’s been two years since then, and a whole lot has been happening for Last Dinosaurs in the past few months. They dropped the single ZOOM, off of their forthcoming debut album In a Million Years, which was then released to critical acclaim on March 2nd, along with being Triple J’s feature album that week, and charting at number eight on the Australian charts. And in what must be the icing on the cake for the band, they have just been signed to Fiction record label in the U.K, home to Kate Nash, Crystal Castles and The Naked and Famous, among others.
The album is a great achievement, a record that in every way exceeds what the band has done before and shows just how much more we can expect to see from these young guys in the future. Colosoul writer Nathanael Rice chatted to Sam Gethin- Jones, bass player for Last Dinosaurs, who agrees that the last few months have indeed been huge for them.
“It’s all pretty surreal at the moment, we waited about six months to release the album after we recorded it, and that whole time there was just this anxiety building up over whether people were going to like it or not, and to finally have it out and to have such a positive reaction from those people has just been more than we could ever hope for.”
Russell from Bloc Party tweeted the other day about how much he loved the album and guitar work, which must be awesome to hear from him!
“Yeah, I mean me and Dan use Twitter, and you can see who tweets about you, and it came up with this name that looks really familiar, so I clicked on it and it comes up as co- founder of Bloc Party, and I was like holy shit! I mean its pretty ridiculous, it’s a great compliment coming from them!”
Now that the album is out, have you guys had some time to relax or are you already looking forward?
“It hasn’t been too intense right now because we are not touring or anything, we start the national tour in April, so we have actually been writing a few things to get a head start on the second album, because when that time comes there is going to be a lot of pressure so it’s always good to have a few things in the bag.”
Listening to In a Million Years, it seems like you guys have really grown and progressed since your ep- it’s a great record. Was it something that was a natural progression from the ep or was it a forced move in a different direction?
“It was really natural, like with the whole song writing thing we didn’t consciously make an effort to you know, look into a different sound or anything, its just I guess as you get older your interests change and you start listening to different music so obviously you are going to be changing with it, and maybe that is evident in this album.”
Did you guys meet in school?
“No actually, I was playing drums for another band, and then I met the guys through the scene and they needed a bass player, and they asked me if I wanted to give it a crack, I had never played before but I really enjoyed what they were doing so I just decided to give it a go, and it worked out pretty well.”
Was there a natural connection between you guys?
“Yeah definitely, we all have similar tastes in music and we all love performing and all pride ourselves as quite technical musicians, we study our instruments quite hard, and so we all sort of bonded over a lot of different things, I guess we are all sort of music nerds.”
I’m a big fan of one of the songs on the album called ‘Satelites’, it reminds me of Jonsi and Alex’s Riceboy Sleeps project, it fits really well on the album as a kind of interlude or midpoint.
“Yeah! I only recently got that, about a year ago and I really got into that album, it’s great! I guess we just like experimenting with loops and different effects and stuff so that actually just came out of nowhere, and we just thought it was really cool, and decided to work on it and chuck it in the album, and it really works as a good middle ground because I guess the pace of the album kind of changes after it, so it sort of signals the second half.”
I heard it was actually recorded in Fortitude valley in Brisbane when you guys were hanging out there one night?
“Yeah, Sean carries a little dictaphone thing around with him, and you can hear talking in the background and the skateboard, and that’s what was recorded in the Valley, you can hear Lachlan skateboarding and a few of us having a chat or something, cause Sean just whacks his little dictaphone out whenever he feels like it and just records stuff, and yeah it meant something to Sean because it was just a moment in time that he captured and he wanted to throw it in the album wherever he could.”
Does Sean write the lyrics?
“Yeah Sean writes the lyrics, he kind of puts himself in this kind of weird mode when he does it, like he had a lot of trouble writing a lot of the lyrics for the album and so he did this weird thing where he puts himself in the future looking back on what is going on right now, if that makes sense. He struggles to confront things that are going on right now so he will act as though he is looking back on it, so he has an older and wiser opinion I guess, it’s really interesting!”
Your national tour is right through April, I believe you are playing at Amplifier in Perth?
“Yeah, Amplifier in Perth and then Mojo’s in Fremantle, so that should be good, we are touring over there with Stillwater Giants and Split Seconds, I cant wait for it!”
And after the tour are you guys going to take a break?
“Not at all, about a week after the tour we are actually going to the U.K, which is pretty crazy because we haven’t really travelled, we have been Japan once but this is legit, I mean we are going to do some tours and stuff so I’m excited to get to have a look at the rest of the world!”
Last Dinosaurs’ debut album, In a Million Years is out now, and tickets for their Perth shows on the 14th and 15th of April can be purchased through Moshtix ($15+ bf).