The Last Dinosaur – The Nothing

Let’s talk beautiful things shall we? Sparklehorse front man Mark Linkous’ breathy vocal. Jeff Martin’s guitar playing on Idaho’s This Way Out and Three Sheets to the Wind. Aqualung’s song Strange and Beautiful. Nick Drake’s Pink Moon. If any or all of these resonate with you, you’ll want to stop reading here and just go purchase the new album by The Last Dinosaur. 

For the less tractable, The Last Dinosaur – who comprise frontman Jamie Cameron, Luke Hayden and Rachel Lanskey – have recorded the most sublime, life-affirming album about death you’ll hear all year. Driven in part by a car accident back in 2005 that took the life of his best friend, The Nothing is Cameron’s attempt to come to terms with terribleness and it is as transcendent as the Flaming Lips’ Do You Realize? 

It’s an album of succeeding highs, an album of music that spoils you for choice. From All My Faith’s repeated angelic swoops and chorus claiming ‘You will be loved’, to the Agnes Obel-like The Body Collapse and the minimal ambience of The Sea, The Nothing is a record that comes at you like a wood-burning stove. The band are unafraid to experiment and there are frequently moments of affecting dissonance but the dissonance is paired with a simple distracting prettiness that beguiles and transports.

All told, it’s the kind of record you could obsess about; the kind of record you’ll foist on friends, music that you know you’ll be playing months from now. Highly recommended.

Listen to: Grow, All My Faith, The Body Collapse