INTERVIEW: Sam from Last Dinosaurs

If there ever were a perfect time to be a band in the Brisbane music scene, it would be now. You would have caught local boys LAST DINOSAURS supporting a little three piece known as FOSTER THE PEOPLE on their recent tour. Their infectious sound is one of the best things to have happened to indie-pop since LD's favourite - Phoenix.

Kayla Clibborn caught up with bass player Sam Gethin-Jones to chat about their upcoming launch shows and what it’s like to be a young band in Brisbane.

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PS: Your debut album In A Million Years comes out on March 2nd. It’s been a busy year for you guys. How are you feeling?

Sam: A lot of crazy stuff seems to be happening at once. We’re incredibly excited to get the album out because we’ve been sitting on it for six months. I just can’t wait for it to finally be out and to see what everyone thinks.

PS: Are you nervous?

Sam: I haven’t really been thinking about it too much. I’ve mostly been thinking about the launch shows. I really want to make the next batch of shows an awesome experience for the crowd. We’ve got three launch shows this month and they’re more a party than anything so we want to make it as fun as possible.

PS: It’s been said that the album asks the big questions about human nature. Where does this come from?

Sam: Sean did most of the lyrical content for the album and he’s very interested in the future and looking in the past as well.

PS: A few of the tracks come from kind of obscure or abstract beginnings. ‘Time and Place’, for example, is based on Serbian inventor Nikola Tesla. Could you tell us more about this?

Sam: It’s almost an indirect apology to Nikola Tesla. People in his time shrugged him off as crazy and a lot of his ideas have paved the way for technology that we use today. In some ways it’s kind of a love song, and it’s also a way of keeping him in people’s minds when they listen to it.

PS: Which comes first: music or lyrics?

Sam: We’re a very technical band. We pride ourselves on playing songs that we’ve written all of the tunes for first and spent months and months trying to refine each song. We want our parts to be as perfect as possible. A lot of the time the lyrics come only a couple of weeks before we release the songs.

PS: Is the writing process a collaborative thing?

Sam: Usually someone will bring in a riff and we’ll jam. A few songs on the album we actually wrote in the week leading up to recording during pre-production. It felt really natural to me because it was just us sitting in a room constructing the songs together and it felt really genuine.

PS: During pre production you travelled to your producer Jean Paul Sung’s farm on the Central Coast. Has the atmosphere and the setting had a huge impact on the album?

Sam: Absolutely. We gravitate to that atmosphere. We’re all city guys in our element, so to be in a completely different environment just lends itself so much to the songwriting. There’s no phone reception so even if you wanted to distract yourself it’s very hard to do. Even when we were doing other things, it was things we wouldn’t normally do – climbing mountains or shooting rifles. It’s good to get your mind out of the norm when you want to create something.

PS: The album was mixed by Eliot James who’s worked with Kaiser Chiefs and Two Door Cinema Club. How surreal is it to have someone of this calibre taking an interest?

Sam: It’s ridiculous! He engineered Bloc Party’s album Silent Alarm, which is my favourite album ever. We got him to do ‘Time and Place’, then he was really keen to do the rest. He was meant to be moving houses and changed the date so he could fit us in! I was so shocked to find out he was that keen to work with us. He got a really great sound out of us, too.

PS: I caught you guys at the Tivoli when you supported Foster the People – the reaction of the crowd was huge. When you played Honolulu everybody went nuts. How does it feel to make an audience move like that?

Sam: It’s definitely the best experience you can have in life. The rush of adrenalin when people are moving to the music you’re making definitely lends so much to your performance. If you’re playing to a crowd that doesn’t want to be there, it’s very hard to convince them that you’re worth their time. You rely on the crowd to give you some energy back. When that happens, it’s a beautiful thing.

PS: What was it like to work with Foster the People?

Sam: They’ve just exploded; it’s crazy how big they’ve become in such a short amount of time. In Melbourne they invited us back to their room after they played. It’s always nice to find out that a band you look up to are just regular nice guys. It was the same when we played with Foals. Foals and Phoenix are collective favourites for Last Dinosaurs, so I lost my shit when I found out we were supporting Foals. You kind of think maybe they don’t give a shit about the support band - and rightly so, because they’re so big – but everyone has just been so incredibly pleasant.

PS: You’re all local Brisbane boys as well. I’m told you all went to school together with the guys from The Cairos and Dune Rats as well. What’s that like?

Sam: The whole Brisbane scene are very close. We’re like a brotherhood. I play drums in Gung Ho every now and then and Sean will play in Dune Rats sometimes, too. There’s no competition, it’s just completely supportive. It’s such a great atmosphere to be making music in. And everyone seems to be coming up at the same time; we’re all being played on Triple J at the moment.  I think it’s a really exciting to be in a Brisbane band right now.

PS: So when you started playing together back in high school, did you ever imagine that you’d be where you are now only a few years down the track?

Sam: You always have aspirations, ever since I was a little fella I knew music was what I wanted to do. I wanted to be a drummer in a heavy metal band, to be honest. You always have these dreams of making it, but the reality of it is so hard. I’m so happy to be where we are.

PS: What’s next for you guys?

We’ve had a few offers to record from overseas. It’s all so surreal. It all happened in the past two weeks or so. I think we’ll be doing a lot of planning for the rest of the year and if we could make the whole year about the album that would be incredible. I just love being kept busy by the music.

Stalk the guys on Facebook here.

Check out their EP Back From The Dead here.

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LAST DINOSAURS DATES

Melbourne

The Toff, February 28

Featuring: Themswoops

Sydney

Spectrum, February 29

Featuring: Toucan

Brisbane

Cobra Kai @ Oh Hello, March 1

Featuring: The Jungle Giants

Words by Kayla Clibborn