Dinosaur Sanctuary are four young musicians whose love of lo-fi squalling guitars and edgy rock brought them together in Dunedin. These sounds have informed their recently released debut full-lengther A Public Toilet Told Me Nothing Gets Better - an album that fits and dashes as each member of the collective sparks off the others.
Opener, ‘Mother Manuka and the Watercolour Wind Farm’, is the first surprise Not the tree hugging anthem the title suggest, it’s full of honed and then changing rhythms, yawning open guitar leads and yelping vocals. Lead singer Kane Strang squawks at his Mother Manuka character “Do you love me?” and it’d be hard not to. The vocals are wistful and charming buried underneath layers of scrawling guitar.
Four songs in, and the listener encounters ‘Smirk’. This pop-fuelled thunderstorm is based on swirling melody and dynamic tempos. It keenly demonstrates what is so impressive about this band – their ability to write accessible, hook-laden rock songs with a deceptive range and complexity. The gritty and the grunge are evident in tracks like Ladies and Tim Strucks where the pop elements are slightly more secretive, but the song writing is just as strong.
