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Last Dinosaurs: Yumeno Garden

Article originally appeared on The Music

Last Dinosaurs have always had the sort of sound that feels like bubbles floating through a picturesque car commercial, clean, soapy, and hard to connect to without bursting the veneer. For their third studio album, Yumeno Garden, the Brisbane boys have done little to alter their output.

Erring on the pop side of rock, the album is full of velcro hooks and circular choruses that do an admirable job of lodging in your brain, but barring one or two slow dives everything proceeds at a predictable, albeit enjoyable, tempo. The overall effect is one of mild homogeneity, with individual songs not selling themselves so much as painting a sonic spectrum. This staid approach to songwriting leaves a catalogue of tracks that could be easily shuffled between albums with little to no consequence. 

The production itself shows an interesting trend towards the sort of under-blown yet encompassing back end prevalent on most vaporwave masters. While intriguing and expansively lush, any subtleties are quickly engulfed like cookie crumbs falling on a deep plush carpet.

Yumeno Garden is bound to be well received and will certainly make a fine addition to any cafe soundtrack, but for a band edging up on its first decade it shows surprisingly little growth.

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The Gametes: The Astronomical Calamities Of Comet Jones

Article originally appeared on The Music Aug 7th 2018

Exploding onto the scene in 2017 with all the velocity and cult acclaim of a popped pimple, The Gametes have been enjoying something in the field of meteoric success.

If you imagine Mr Bungle and the descendants of Devo shouting from the shores of The Lord Of The Flies, you might begin to imagine how unpredictable their sound can be. Simultaneously whimsical and dire, they flit from surf rock to gothic faster than you can sing space opera and with far more dramatic flair. After displaying a penchant for narrative songwriting on their debut, The Sweat Tapes, they’ve dove directly into the concept for their follow up.

A sci-fi leaning story about a lone space traveller, the underlying problem with The Astronomical Calamities of Comet Jones is that the narrative isn’t overly interesting or conceptually original but the execution is definitely both. Outrageous and eclectic, each track does an excellent job of showcasing their eccentric ideologies.

Like your favourite director’s worst movie, the album loses gravitas even as its narrative seeks to build mass, and yet, it is utterly, indefinably loveable.

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Tape/Off: Broadcast Park

Article originally appeared on The Music Jul 12th 2018

Broadcast Park is gritty, raw and thick, full of misleading lulls presented here as potholes on a dirt road. It’s really quite excellent if you’re in the mood for being thrashed about.

A vocalisation of manifest injustice, this is the bang and the whimper, the burning of the straw man in variegated and at times atonal intonations that flux from sombre to manic without diverging from a brand of beat delivery that feels as jarring and unacceptable as its subject matter should. And yet, it’s so authentic, so immediate, grounded and familiar that it’s like listening to your down on his luck mate air his grievances. And good on ’em, good flipping on ’em, because it’s taken years for this LP to arrive and you’d have to wonder if there were no frisson at this point then why make anything at all? Thankfully we have fragments here that are over four years old and are hitting home in ways that are more relevant than ever. Things are not going well and it’s a great time for people to hear why.

Tape/Off have put forward something that says, this is Australia, this is modern life, this is malaise meets rage at its most percussive and poignant. This is the sound of someone who’s finally had enough and is ready to speak up.

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Special Guests… Can I Sample A Feeling?

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