A FEW weeks ago, yr humble scribe bet the farm a little bit while completely enraptured by The Last Dinosaur’s “Wholeness & The Implicate Order” (and anyway, isn’t this what we want from music? To transport us, elevate us, make us throw normal order to the wind?).
The writer – and by the writer, I of course mean me – said that Jamie Cameron, the man behind The Last Dinosaur, was vying for promotion to that genii galaxy that probably includes Kate Bush, The Blue Nile, Talk Talk, Scott Walker and the Paddy McAloon of I Trawl the Megahertz.
I mean, 2017’s album The Nothing, if you know it – and there are a million worse ways to spend today than securing a copy of it – was wrought of fine acoustic hush; but of the direction of travel indicated by “Wholeness & The Implicate Order”, grave, awesome, I said; “a leap of the magnitude of The Colour of Spring to Spirit of Eden.”
High stakes, I know, I know.
But Jamie’s sucker-punched us today with the noir diary of “In The Belly Of The Whale”; don’t just watch below, marvel. It’s got that lovely tension that arises from perfectly observed fragments of the quotidian set against luxuriously arranged music you find in tracks such as Roy Harper’s “Another Day”. Truth, candour, little intimacies. “We’ll eat the vegetarian chicken / We’ll kiss the wrong girls,” intones close friend Amy Acre.
There’s minimalist electronic atmospheres; gentle, Satie-like piano intonation; pensive strings. It’s a stunner. You know what? Add the shirt off my back to the bet. The Last Dinosaur is astounding.
Amy says: “The Last Dinosaur’s music unlocks something in my soul that reminds me what music is for.
“‘In the Belly of a Whale’ contains a poem about our friendship, which was forged while we were each going through personal earthquakes.
“We’ve seen each other grow in life and art and I love that we are part of each other’s creative odysseys.”
“I lost my job. I lost confidence. I lost my mind. I made this record.” says Jamie.
The Last Dinosaur’s Wholeness is due out on October 23rd via Phases; pre-save the album here.
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