Why Last Dinosaurs Explored Far-Flung Continents

When Brisbane indie quartet Last Dinosaurs recently dropped their accomplished second album Wellness it seemed as if they'd been off-grid for ages, three years having passed since they'd made such an impact with their debut long-player, In A Million Years. But the band had been anything but slack or complacent in this interim — they had, in fact, been busy introducing their distinctive sound to whole new audiences in far-flung continents. 

"Yeah, it did seem like we were gone," smiles frontman Sean Caskey. "We did heaps of Southeast Asia and a little bit of South Africa, and that was great because it kept the ball rolling for us and gave us something to do. Also it showed us how much of an opportunity there is for us over there, particularly in Southeast Asia — it's like another Australia for us. We've never even done any promo there and it ended up being better than a lot of other places where we've tried very, very hard — it was just crazy." 

"It's literally because of BC [from Dune Rats] that all these doors have been opened."

Fellow Brisbanites Dune Rats are the only other young band in memory to have travelled these unbeaten paths, and of course this is no coincidence.

"That's the reason we did it!" Caskey laughs. "BC [Michaels] would come home and go, 'Man, you need to go to South Africa!' and I'd be, like, 'Oh, I doubt that we'd be able to do it, man'. But he'd just go on about it, and he contacted the guy who booked their shows and that guy contacted our manager — it's literally because of BC that all these doors have been opened. But we did already have quite a strong fanbase in Asia, but I guess we've got BC to thank for giving us a lot of these opportunities."

Caskey explains that a line-up change — with original high school bassist Michael Sloane re-joining the ranks — also rejuvenated both the band and the creative process. 

"We'd just gotten a new bass player before we did the Asia touring, so it was good for us to be able to figure ourselves out with the new dynamic, which isn't a whole lot different it's just that we essentially now have another singer," he offers. "We were playing some songs where he sings, so it was really interesting to play to new audiences and play new songs; even though they knew the old stuff it was good to be going through the new material in another country. 

"The reason that he's in the band was that we were writing some songs together — just jamming for fun — and they ended up being good songs, even though at first I never would have imagined them being Dino songs ever. They weren't what I thought a Dino song should be at all, but then as the other Wellness songs started coming it sort of made a lot more sense and you could see the whole picture coming together and how it could all work. When we needed a new bass-player it was just a no brainer getting Sloane back in there."