Three years ago Brisbane quartet Last Dinosaurs released their debut album In A Million Years, setting their sound as light, guitar-based indie pop. In the time since, this hidden Australian jewel has gone through band reorganizations with a bass player replacement and intense musical rediscovery before finally releasing their sophomore album, Wellness.
Opening with “Take Your Time," which starts with a forest of sounds that mimicking tongue clicks and raindrops, Wellness then glides into the lead single reminiscent of their debut sound, “Evie." Wellness continues to track a sporadic lineup throughout, yet the album stands as a cohesive collection due to the ethereal dance-floor rhythms present within each track, similar to the sounds of early-80’s pop projects. With silky electric guitars and a vocals that are over-mixed in both volume and pitch to stand out, this album lifts with its riffs without losing the Last Dinosaurs sound that fans grew to love three years ago.
Throughout the writing process, Last Dinosaurs built unique, in-house pedals from scratch, naming them, and eventually the songs made with them, "Evie" and the title-track "Wellness." Each song has a specific backing sound created with a specific pedal, unique to the band and the story, a tedious process that paid off. It’s this attention to detail that builds Wellness into the great piece of music it really is.
For example, “Wellness” itself is one of the slower beat tunes on the record, holding an ever-present, wavering silver string that quivers with the sadness of the afterlife of a lost lover. Followed with the second single, “Apollo”, a quickstep guitar song, the softness of “Wellness” is even more impressive while the upbeat nature of “Apollo” is even harder to miss up against it. Without disrupting the singularity of each track, Last Dinosaurs pulls together the full story of loving, losing, and moving on.