Album Review: Last Dinosaurs - Yumeno Garden

Last Dinosaurs have always had the sort of sound that feels like bubbles floating through a picturesque car commercial; clean, soapy, and hard to connect to without bursting the veneer. For their third studio album, Yumeno Garden, the Brisbane boys have done little to alter their output.

Erring on the pop side of rock, the album is full of velcro hooks and circular choruses that do an admirable job of lodging themselves into your brain. But barring one or two slow dives, everything proceeds at a very predictable, albeit enjoyable, tempo. The overall effect is one of mild homogeneity, with individual songs not selling themselves so much as they instead paint a sonic spectrum. This staid approach to songwriting creates a catalogue of tracks that could be easily shuffled between albums with little to no consequence. 

The production itself shows an interesting trend towards the sort of under-blown yet encompassing back end prevalent on most vaporwave masters. While intriguing and expansively lush, any subtleties are quickly engulfed like cookie crumbs falling onto a deep plush carpet.

Yumeno Garden is bound to be well received and will certainly make a fine addition to any cafe soundtrack, but for a band edging up on its first decade, it shows surprisingly little growth.