A Review of my Review of Last Dinosaurs’ ‘In A Million Years’
When we were somewhere between grades 8 and 10, me and a mate established a blog where we would review albums and movies of our choice. It was our little creative outlet in a period where we were heavily influenced by Pitchfork and triple j magazine. Our one dedicated reader was our English teacher and, with each new review, we aimed to impress her more and more.
Looking back, we made some pretty solid calls. We also made a few shockers. I’m going to compare my opinions of today with the opinions of a less-cultured Sam, starting with Last Dinosaurs’ In a Million Years.
For your reference:
The last few years has spawned more Aussie indie rock groups than ever before, and in a genre with such little variety, it’s quite hard to pick a great indie band when they all sound the same. Brissie group Last Dinosaurs had a go earlier this year with In a Million Years, their debut LP. The album opens with one of the main singles, ‘Zoom’, which is an alright song, but after that, most of the songs just merge into one giant indie rock monster. All songs have that distinctive mellow guitar, tricky hi-hat rhythms and uninspired bass, along with vocals that offer a little variation from the everyday indie rock tracks. Some other stand outs include ‘Andy’ and, my favourite, ‘I Can’t Decide’, which is a welcome change that goes into the heavier rock areas of music. When most songs sound not only like other songs on the album, but every other indie rock song in existence, it’s just not quite there.
6/10
The Awesominator
One of my mates was a big fan of Last Dinosaurs at the time of this release and I remember him getting visibly frustrated with this review because he rated the album so much. After listening to their newest album Yumeno Garden and going back to listen to In a Million Years I have to say sorry, Doily, because you were right.
I stand by parts of this review. There are many dated sounds on here that are so telling of the times. Novel riffs and the irritating “hey!” can be heard throughout the album — most notably in Honolulu, which I could take or leave. It still doesn’t really add anything new to a genre that I was evidently tired of at the time. But, in whole, this is a much better album than I painted it out to be seven years ago.
While some riffs may be novel, they are all extremely catchy and tight. There are solid guitar, synth and vocal melodies all over this thing and I have no idea what I was talking about when I said that the bass was “uninspired”. There’s no way you could come out of listening to this album feeling anything but chipper — songs like Weekend, I Can’t Help You and Repair are proper road trip tunes and immediately transform me to a simpler time. Additionally, 2012 me made a great call naming I Can’t Decide as his favourite — it is a ridiculously good pop punk tune.
The weird thing about listening to this album today is that, while I didn’t think I particularly enjoyed it back in the day, I look back on it so nostalgically and feel that it left a mark on me. It represents a period of my life filled with mates and triple j and that’s what contributes to me enjoying it so much today. That and the fact that there’s just genuinely good tunes all over the album has me questioning my original judgement of the mediocrity of a 6 — it’s at least an 8.
