Exclusive: Last Dinosaurs on 'From Mexico With Love' and their Upcoming Show in Singapore
In an exclusive interview with L'Officiel Singapore, Last Dinosaurs divulges how their music-making process has changed on the road since putting out their first album in 2012.
Ahead of their upcoming sold-out show in Singapore on 17 November, Australian indie-pop band Last Dinosaurs shares with L’Officiel Singapore what inspired their newest 10-track introspective album From Mexico With Love. The members – Sean Caskey, Michael Sloane and Lachlan Caskey – talk about the message behind their music, and how the album shows the band’s technical and creative growth.
What inspired your upcoming album From Mexico With Love?
Lach travelled to Mexico right before Covid to stay in a small city called Guanajuato while the world went into lockdown. He wrote almost the whole album there before we finally got him back to Australia more than a year later.
How does it differ from your previous albums?
This is the first one where Lach has written every song. In our last album Yumeno Garden, half of the songs were Sean's, and half were Lach's, so it's a nice, natural evolution into the new album that Lach penned.
Do you each have a favourite track from it?
Our favourite at the moment is probably Auto-Sabotage, but we love so many of the songs on there, and some of the gems that people will get deep with are the songs that weren't singles. We love when an album has that!
Tell us about the band’s creative process. Has it changed since producing In A Million Years in 2012?
The process is certainly always evolving, but it continues to be driven by having Lach and Sean refine their production skills and make high-quality demos from wherever they may be. This means using digital midi drums and not using amps to record, which is also something we've brought over to the live shows. We generally come together as a band to refine the points in the studio after the song has a defined form.
Last Dinosaurs have gained quite a global audience. How do you think your sound has managed to hit home for listeners all over the world?
We’d like to think it's just one of those intangible things about music, that it can strike a chord with all sorts of people in different situations. We don't think it's something you can put your finger on, but we’re glad it's resonated with people around the world!
What type of message do you want your audience to take away from your music?
Making your own meanings and messages from music is a pretty important part of enjoying music! We don't necessarily have specific messages to convey but songs do have themes in themselves that say something. From Mexico With Love has more of those self-reflective messages that naturally came from time alone in the pandemic. For us, the album is also a message of support for people that might be going through stuff.
You toured North America with Bad Suns. Do you have any fond memories from that leg of the tour that you can share with our readers?
It was great being able to see more of the US than we were able to on our last three tours there. We stayed in some beautiful little towns, and Bad Suns were absolutely awesome on stage and as people!
A funny little moment happened when we checked into a motel in a small town in the Midwest. We had been listening to Silverchair on a late night drive after a long time not hearing their music, and mutually going, "We forgot how good this band is". Fast forward to the end of the drive, we go to check in, and the lady at the counter says, "Oh you're from Australia? Recognise this?" And she shows us a tattoo of one of Silverchair's albums on her wrist. She was a super fan of theirs! We couldn't believe the coincidence.
After being on the road in the US for over a month, you’ll be back in the region for your sold-out show in Singapore. What can Singaporean fans look forward to during the show?
They can look forward to a few new songs and a pretty tight live show after we've been on the road for five weeks before that! We absolutely can't wait, Singapore and Southeast Asia in general are one of our favourite regions to tour, and we're long overdue! It's always a high point getting into Singapore, the fans there are so, so good to us and have such a passion for our music, and music in general. See you there!
