Q&A: Last Dinosaurs Celebrate 10 Years of ‘Wellness’ with Reimagined Version ‘Wellnxss’
INTERVIEW
INTERVIEW
☆ BY RACHEL LANE ☆
Photo by Keaidkumchai Tongpai
A LONG TIME AGO IN A LAND FAR AWAY,— Scratch that —10 years ago in Brisbane, Australia, Last Dinosaurs (brothers Sean and Lachlan Caskey, and Michael Sloan) released their sophomore album, Wellness. Featuring beloved tracks like “Apollo,” “Stream” and “Evie,” Wellness quickly became a fan favorite. Now, after a decade of sitting with the record, Wellness was re-recorded and reimagined into Wellnxss, which is out today!
With half of the record already released as singles, fans have quickly gripped onto the re-recordings, praising the band for their rawness and grit. The new re-recoded album features five new tracks from the original Wellness era: “Dive,” “Dead or Alive,” “Kebabs,” “Pink Flags,” and “Her Mind.” The band follows the album’s release with a U.S. and Canada tour this February through March before returning home for an Australian tour in June.
We chatted with Sean Caskey, who took us back in time to the making of Wellness. He reflected on finding inspiration for the album all around him; from the constant creative energy of living in a house full of young musicians, to wandering through the Australian bush, to an encounter with a Scottish sound engineer who unknowingly helped shape the album. Caskey gave us an inside look at re-recording the record and what it felt like to revisit these songs with a decade of new experience.
Oh, and he answers the questions we have all been dying to know: Does Sean really hate “Evie”?
LUNA: Take me back to 10 years ago. What was life like for you? Do any stories or memories come to mind from recording Wellness?
CASKEY: When I was making Wellness, I was living with a bunch of friends, most of them also in bands (Gung Ho, Millions), and that was the kind of environment I used to thrive in. I loved the friendly competition of living so close to other creative musicians. I would always hear my friends' songs coming together through the thin walls, which made me feel guilty for not playing guitar. I’d be tinkering away with electronics, fiddling with what would be my first guitar pedal creations. They were good times.
The strongest memories that stand out from recording Wellness are the times I’d go bush bashing in search of a good chorus here or better verse lyrics there. The studio was situated on top of a bushy hill with big boulders bearing ancient Aboriginal carvings. It truly felt special to be surrounded by nature with its rich history. I felt obliged to tell stories worthy of millennia, like the carvings in the stone I was sitting on. Didn’t work though.
LUNA: What inspired you during the making of this album?
CASKEY: I can’t really remember what was inspiring me, but the namesake song “Wellness” was inspired by a song I heard in Nottingham when we were on tour. The sound guy there was playing music as we were setting up, and it was the most interesting sounding thing I’d ever heard. It was like someone took a Deftones song and stretched it out without losing any sound quality; like a slow-motion tsunami wave of guitars with a breathy voice that had almost frozen in time.
I asked him, “Who are we listening to?” He mumbled something incomprehensible. “Sorry?” He mumbled louder again, this time I realised he was just speaking with an extremely thick Scottish accent. I asked him one more time, and once again, I was not receiving any comprehensible information so I just said “Oh okay, awesome, thanks.” Then months later, I really badly wanted to hear that song again. I searched and searched for days online, nothing. My final option was to just recreate the song. This is how Wellness was born, originally with really heavy distorted guitars.
I never ended up finding that song.
LUNA: What’s it like to be in a band for 20 plus years? How have you evolved over that time?
CASKEY: The last 20 years have taught me how to hate. Haha, just kidding. We have evolved like a fine wine without a lid. Being in a band for this long actually does feel the same as being in a band for 2 years. Time flies by, all the tours kind of fade into the next. I love that, though. As I’ve gotten older and matured as a musician however, I have put a lot more of my whole being into making sure the audience has the best quality time possible. We all do, actually. We really feel down when we don’t have the crowd jumping and screaming. My job is to make people forget where they are, forget that their feet hurt, and release everything. Sing, let it out and reflect on the times when they connected with our songs.
LUNA: When did the concept of re-recording Wellness start? What was the process of re-recording that album like for you?
CASKEY: We originally wanted to repress the record because it had been out of stock for so long. When our management reached out to our former label to get that going, we got a flat out rejection, so our only option was to re-record it and put it out again. To be completely honest, none of us were particularly happy with the old recordings anyway. It never sounded the way I wanted, and back then I didn’t have the skills to create that sound.
Recording demos and sitting in the back of studios observing was enough of a formative experience for me to be able to craft the sounds I wanted today. I slowly learned that less is more with everything. Less EQ manipulation, less compression, less stressing.
LUNA: Tell me a little about the struggle of being tied to major labels and losing ownership of your music to some extent. What advice would you give to artists just starting out?
CASKEY: Signing to a major label back then was such a fantastic decision to begin with, but the arrangement can so easily slam on the brakes for your whole career. The main thing was they weren’t allowing us to record and release when we wanted. I completely understand where they’re coming from, and I also appreciate what they did for us. All the staff were excellent at thrusting us into the international music stratosphere. However, we thankfully bailed on that contract and eventually found a great label that really works with us called Nettwerk.
I wouldn’t necessarily advise anyone to go solo with no label, or sign with a smaller label, or shoot straight to the top with the big ones. It all works out differently, for different people, at different times. You just gotta make the most with whatever situation you get yourself into. I definitely recommend finding yourself good management, which is crucial and arguably more important.
LUNA: A lot of fans have noticed and appreciated how raw the new versions are. They have expressed feeling more emotion in the music. Would you agree with this? How did you want the new versions to sound and feel?
CASKEY: I guess I just performed them the way I have been for the past decade. In that decade, I felt a bit more grit in the songs, and I really wanted to insert that into the recordings. My vocals are pretty much all single-tracked, which makes the vocals more intimate and raw. Old Wellness recordings are double or quadruple-tracked tracked which kind of allows you to hide your lack of singing skills, like using a filter for selfies. I used to be all about it, not being able to distinguish an isolated voice was an easier way for me to express myself without feeling like my self-expression would get so scrutinized. The words have already been said, so I had no qualms about doubling down and just singing it straight up.
LUNA: According to your fans, you notoriously hate “Evie,” or at least playing it live. Would you like to address this at all? How are you feeling about the new version?
CASKEY: It’s one of the lamest songs in the history of music. It’s just one of those songs that never ever got to a place where my soul could say, “that’ll do, pig.” The new, less cringe version is a little bit better.
LUNA: Is there any other song from Wellness that you like more now than you did 10 years ago?
CASKEY: I loved recording “Karma!” It has got so much punch and has high-highs vocally. I’m really stoked on the way it came out. That’s mainly because, as I was recording them, I wasn’t sure how well these songs were gonna come out, and “Karma” gave me that extra confidence boost once it started to take shape. It spurred me on to finish recording the album.
LUNA: The re-record also includes five new tracks from the original Wellness era. Is there a reason why those didn't originally make the cut? Which is your favorite?
CASKEY: There are a bunch of songs that don’t make the cut all the time. Sometimes, some of those songs are ok, but they just don’t have a place in the record. “Slow” from our recent album was one of those songs from the Wellness era, too. My favourite would have to be “Kebabs.” The moment leaving the last chorus into the outro for me is perfection. Perfect in the sense that it is recorded exactly the way I heard it in my head, and it was all it needed to be.
LUNA: Speaking of “Kebabs,” it has been given high praise since its release a few weeks ago and has quickly become a fan favorite Last Dinosaurs track! Tell me a little about creating this song.
CASKEY: I came up with the intro and outro to that song around 2010. I had a really strange chorus with weird timing, but it was the same as “Take on Me” by A-ha. We performed it once at our first Splendour in the Grass festival appearance. The funniest thing was that it never ever felt right when we played it, and it took a year or two before we all realised we had completely different interpretations of where “one” was in the beat. It’s hard to explain, but we’re all playing our parts, and we are all counting one, two, three, four completely different by a really strange fraction. So we had to ditch that one.
A while later, I rewrote the song completely, incorporating the new verse and a simpler chorus. It was an ode to my friend Billy, who was having such terrible luck with his love life, like a series of unfortunate events. I felt bad for him cause he always has such good intentions and just gets rocked about in the harshest seas searching for a companion.
The music for the chorus made me imagine a PlayStation One farm game, which I’m not sure still exists. I was visualising PS1-style graphics of a farm, barn, and chickens. It really pulled at the heartstrings.
The genesis of the song name was also very special. I made the original chorus melody with the bassoon instrument on my kids' keyboard. It naturally evolved into baboons, then babs, then “Kebabs” was born and remained. When you’re saving GarageBand projects, you can’t just mash the keyboard because you very quickly realise you can’t distinguish between askjdhasdfkjh and askjhafskjhasfkj. Am I normal, chat?
LUNA: You guys have such a unique relationship with your fanbase, such as free meet and greets before shows, fan designed merch, and even the cover art for Wellnxss being fan designed. Ya’ll have really cultivated a community for many of your fans. Have you received any fan gifts that you cherish and still have?
CASKEY: I have tried to keep as many gifts as possible. To be honest, the best ones are the flat ones because we can actually pack them away, haha. There’s a treasure chest in my room full of all the letters, drawings, gifts, and pictures people have given me over the years. I’ll look at them all when I'm really old, reminisce, and think of everyone who put time and effort into creating these beautiful little mementos.
LUNA: What can we expect from the Wellness Tour in 2026? Are you planning on playing the album top to bottom?
CASKEY: We’re looking to do a lot of trapeze work; we’re aiming to be airborne for most of the show. Think headset mics, tight suits, shiny skin, arctic white teeth, ankle socks, and business shoes. We don’t want to chew up too much time playing music and flying through the air, though; the primary focus is making it a Wellness seminar experience so our fans can walk out of there wiser and healthier. We will also be launching our very own custom Wellness-flavoured vapes, so keep an eye out for them.
We will play the album; not sure of the order yet, perhaps in a different order, like when the songs were written, injecting other songs in there too. We might even play “Evie!” I find the concept of playing the songs in order so 2015.
LUNA: Where do you see Last Dinosaurs 10 years from now?
CASKEY: In the White House.
