Notes From Under Ground – the solo project of Last Dinosaurs guitarist Lachlan Caskey – rips into music-industry nepotism on his intoxicating single “Names In Blue,” a glistening, boldly satirical yacht rock groove whose sardonic lyrics and Wikipedia-style music video trace the paper trail behind the myth of the self-made star.
Stream: “Names in Blue” – Notes From Under Ground
God forbid I make any beneficiary of nepotism feel undeserving of their circumstances, after all the industry needs a certain quota of mediocre and talented nepo babies to keep the algorithms clogged. At least maybe some of them can really play their instrument.
* * *
Follow the blue hyperlinks long enough, and the family tree usually explains the fast track.
A familiar surname can open doors in every industry, while money, access, and an entire industry apparatus smooth the road ahead. By the time the public meets the next supposedly self-made star, the ascent has already been carefully engineered.
Notes From Under Ground trace that audit trail on his glistening new single “Names In Blue,” a sly, piano-led satire that takes aim at music-industry nepotism through a dreamy, jazzy groove. Bright, theatrical, and wickedly catchy, it lands every jab without ever sacrificing its pulse – a reminder of how easily inherited access can be polished into the illusion of earned success.
Hey man
Just do your research please, yeah
Right there
Suspicious can’t you see!?
Well
Headed straight for the top
Executing their plot
They’re making cuts
yeah they’re churning it out
It’s 20 percent but they
work for you now
But you didn’t need to earn it
Atwood Magazine is proud to be premiering “Names In Blue,” the sweetly provocative new single from Notes From Under Ground, the solo project of Australian-Japanese artist and Last Dinosaurs guitarist Lachlan Caskey. Out July 14 via Eryngii Records, the song arrives one year after his five-track American Grace & Guilt EP, and offers the first glimpse of Notes From Under Ground’s next chapter.
Named after Dostoevsky’s novella, Notes From Under Ground began with Caskey posting demos to SoundCloud while at university. The project has since become a home for ideas that fall beyond Last Dinosaurs’ framework, giving him room to bringing any number of colorful musical arrangements, sharper literary instincts, and a more personal worldview to life in song.
“It’s more or less a release valve for ideas that could never fit the framework of Dinos,” Caskey tells Atwood Magazine. “This music is particularly different in its genre and instrumentation. Dinos is indie rock driven by guitars, this is basically more or less yacht rock (as much as I dislike that term) that is piano driven.”
“Names In Blue” pushes that freedom toward classic piano-pop with a lacquered, satirical grin.
Caskey handles vocals, guitars, synths, piano, bass, and percussion, joined by Miles Morris of Bad Suns on drums and Michael Seyer on additional piano, with Jake Miller mixing and mastering the track.
Its spark came from the year Caskey spent living in Los Angeles, where the distance between public myth and private advantage kept narrowing. The title turns a tiny bit of internet formatting into a clue: Celebrity family trees are often only a click away, even when the official story insists on grit alone.
“‘Names in Blue’ is a satire on the insufferable nature of nepotism in the music industry,” he explains. “It draws from my personal experience living in Los Angeles and reflects a reality of what I saw and experienced there. Names in blue specifically refers to the idea that someone’s parents or other close relations have their names written as a blue text hyper-link, often on Wikipedia, because they’re someone of significant wealth and influence already. To those who grew up in this environment, it probably seems quite normal. But from the outside looking in, it was like witnessing one of the most powerful and clichéd narratives of the place and industry as ever.”
The image cuts deep because the evidence has been sitting in plain sight. A hyperlink becomes a paper trail, opening onto the money and connections that can precede a supposed public “breakthrough.” Caskey’s target is the mythmaking that converts inherited leverage into a story of pure self-creation.
Humble
The cover story stands, ha
Funny
Those who know it’s just a fantasy
Serve that 3 letter crew
They’ve got nothing to lose
Waiting
For your love to trickle down, yeah
Bending
At the knee they kiss your feet, well
Made of real flesh and bone
(but) songs are empty got no soul
Musically, he makes that critique pleasurable enough to keep circling back.
“Names In Blue” glows, glistens, and pulses, its piano carrying a jazzy, dreamlike warmth while Morris’ drums give the song a taut, hypnotic groove and an intoxicating sway. Synths and guitars flicker through the mix, and Caskey rides the arrangement with an enthusiastic theatricality, letting the music’s brightness embolden each accusation.
“The sardonic style of Steely Dan is a big influence here,” Caskey shares. “Not saying at all that I can match them or even come close, but they are an influence. I like that their songs always sound dark in their off-kilter, dominant voicing kind of way. It’s a relatable feeling these days at least for me.”
That influence lives in the tension between polish and unease. The song’s surface gleams, but its harmonies keep tilting sideways, giving the groove a faintly unstable pull. Caskey spent much of his time in Los Angeles listening to Aja and Gaucho while driving through the city, and “Names In Blue” carries a similar pleasure in pairing immaculate musicianship with a distinctly sour view of its surroundings.
The opening verse gets straight to the machinery: “Headed straight for the top / Executing their plot,” followed by “They’re making cuts yeah they’re churning it out / It’s 20 percent but they work for you now / But you didn’t need to earn it.” The language reduces the dream to a workflow. Careers are assembled, percentages are assigned, and an entire operation begins moving around the next marketable face.
They’re writing the hits
yeah they figure it out
It’s 20 percent but
they work for you now
And you didn’t need to earn it!
Caskey’s delivery makes the satire sting. “Humble / The cover story stands, ha,” he sings, puncturing the manufactured narrative with one dry laugh before following it with “Funny / Those who know it’s just a fantasy.” Later, the song lands its hardest charge: “Made of real flesh and bone / (but) songs are empty got no soul.”
Caskey is careful to separate privilege from talent; his frustration lies with the way wealth determines whose work receives the loudest megaphone.
“Class is not the defining factor in how good music is, but it undoubtedly has something to do with the substance baked into it,” he observes. “I think there’s a lot of music out there that is well-produced, but empty. In contrast, the opposite also exists. Obviously having both is the goal. Music is serious in the sense that the cultural industry should nurture and enrich people’s lives. Slop always fades into obscurity in time, but why should it dominate the cultural focus in the moment and detract from the abundance of substantial artists in this world?”
This strong conviction gives “Names In Blue” its staying power. Beneath the glimmer and movement is a demand for a musical culture that recognizes substance before pedigree – one where the family tree no longer gets mistaken for proof of merit.
Class is not the defining factor in how good music is, but it undoubtedly has something to do with the substance baked into it. I think there’s a lot of music out there that is well-produced, but empty.
* * *
The accompanying music video pulls “Names In Blue” into one long Wikipedia-like rabbit hole, turning the architecture of online knowledge into a whimsical and biting map of music-industry privilege.
A “Eryngii Wiki” page for Names in Blue – described here as “a project in which a working musician tries to make jokes about despair before despair gets to the microphone first” – gradually fills with links, definitions, disclaimers, and deadpan editorial notes, inviting the viewer to keep diving deeper into the system Caskey is dissecting.
Each fictional entry exposes another piece of the machinery. “Suspicious activity” reframes unusually smooth career momentum as “escorted delivery,” while “plot” describes the moment a carefully financed ascent gets sold back to the public as destiny. Elsewhere, “20 percent” becomes a portal into the contracts, collaborators, and professional infrastructure waiting behind the supposedly self-made star. The humor is playful, but the accumulating evidence gives the journey its edge.
“If we’re going to have to accept the terms of living inside a system that is predicated on class domination, then they better be okay with people like us gently pointing it out,” Caskey says.
This impulse shapes the entire visual. The parody never names a specific target; instead, it builds an absurdly detailed encyclopedia of euphemisms, financial arrangements, and inherited advantages. Blue links ordinarily signal authority and context, yet here they become the trail of evidence, connecting each polished success story to the resources and relationships buried beneath it.
By the time the rabbit hole circles back to the “Names In Blue” entry itself, the familiar interface has become a satirical archive of manufactured momentum. The video deepens the song’s central point by making the viewer an active participant in the investigation: Keep following the links, and the myth of effortless success begins to document its own construction.
They’re falling in love
With that handsome face of yours
You may be ungrateful
But you’re a big star now
You don’t have to wake up, no
“Names In Blue” stands apart as a rare pop song willing to map the machinery around success as closely as the success itself.
Caskey gives shape to a conversation many artists intentionally (or unintentionally) leave untouched: How money, family access, and industry infrastructure can be repackaged as destiny once the public sees the finished product. He doesn’t reduce that critique to a slogan; he builds it into the song’s wit, groove, and structure until the system begins to expose itself.
Atwood Magazine recently caught up with Caskey to talk about the freedom he finds in Notes From Under Ground, the experiences that inspired “Names In Blue,” and the convictions driving this next chapter of his work. Along the way, he reflects on the song’s Steely Dan influence, the class politics at its core, and the kind of musical culture he believes deserves more room to thrive. Stream “Names In Blue” and watch its accompanying music video exclusively on Atwood Magazine, and dive into our full interview with Lachlan Caskey below.
Follow the blue hyperlinks long enough, and the family tree starts looking a lot like a road map.
Baby on trillions of TVs
Baby it’s right there
His picture perfect genes, urgh
Give them what they want
Pour your heart into song
Waiting
for your love to trickle down
Bending
At the knee they kiss your feet, well
Made of real flesh and bone
(but) songs are empty got no soul
— —
:: stream/purchase Names in Blue here ::
:: connect with Notes From Under Ground here ::
— —
Stream: “Names in Blue” – Notes From Under Ground
A CONVERSATION WITH NOTES FROM UNDER GROUND
Atwood Magazine: Lachlan, hello and thank you for your time! For those who are just discovering Notes From Under Ground today through this premiere, what do you want them to know about this project?
Notes From Under Ground (Lachlan Caskey): I am a working-class musician, I am 33 years old, I am half-Japanese, I live in Japan, I am a marxist, I wrote all the music myself, performed 98 percent of it myself also.
How does Notes From Under Ground give you a different kind of creative space than your work in Last Dinosaurs?
Notes From Under Ground: It’s more or less a release valve for ideas that could never fit the framework of Dinos. This music is particularly different in its genre and instrumentation. Dinos is indie rock driven by guitars, this is basically more or less yacht rock (as much as I dislike that term) that is piano driven.
Taking its name from Dostoevsky, Notes From Under Ground seems to lean into a more literary, introspective side of your songwriting. What was your original vision for this project, and how has that vision evolved?
Notes From Under Ground: There was no vision, it was just me putting my demos up on SoundCloud. I was reading a lot at the time when I was in uni, and I suppose Dostoyevsky resonated with me. It’s a shame though how tainted by Jordan Peterson that name is now. I don’t extract too deep a philosophy to the point of tears like Peterson does regarding Dostoyevsky; I just like how the books make me feel.
It’s been exactly a year since the release of American Grace & Guilt. What’s your relationship with that EP and its songs today?
Notes From Under Ground: Man, no relationship. I feel those songs, except for “Lying Awake,” are ones I’d perhaps rather forget. The songs were mostly written in Toronto in 2022 and rotted on my computer for years, they feel very irrelevant to me. I love the artwork though.
“Names In Blue” is such a sharp, theatrical song – bright and melodic on the surface, but very pointed underneath. What were you trying to capture in this track, and what’s the story behind this song?
Notes From Under Ground: The sardonic style of Steely Dan is a big influence here. Not saying at all that I can match them or even come close, but they are an influence. I like that their songs always sound dark in their off-kilter, dominant voicing kind of way. It’s a relatable feeling these days at least for me.
You’ve described “Names In Blue” as a satire on the insufferable nature of nepotism in the music industry. What made you want to write about that experience so directly?
Notes From Under Ground: Living in Los Angeles for a year. I think it’s an observation one would make regardless of who they are. But god forbid I make any beneficiary of nepotism feel undeserving of their circumstances, after all the industry needs a certain quota of mediocre and talented nepo babies to keep the algorithms clogged. At least maybe some of them can really play their instrument.
The title is such a specific image: The blue hyperlink names on Wikipedia that quietly reveal someone’s proximity to wealth, status, or influence. What did that phrase unlock for you, and what is its resonance today?
Notes From Under Ground: Well, Tadashi Beddie (my friend and manager) wrote that. It doesn’t unlock anything more than it just points out a truth. If we’re going to have to accept the terms of living inside a system that is predicated on class domination, then they better be okay with people like us gently pointing it out.
There’s a real bite in the chorus: “They’re writing the hits yeah they figure it out / It’s 20 percent but they work for you now / And you didn’t need to earn it!” How does this refrain capture the frustration at the heart of your song?
Notes From Under Ground: Money can buy you the resources to build a career in music, you just have to be half-decent at singing (arguably maybe not even half decent) and moderately good-looking. If a small pool of songwriters who all live in the same sunny basin are making the music, the chaotic goods are thrusting it into everybody’s phone and a large three letter conglomerate is collecting the interest, you have to wonder if the music is really music by this point, or just some people with enough money to make more of it. Sometimes it isn’t, but sometimes… often, it is.
Later, you sing, “Made of real flesh and bone, but songs are empty got no soul.” How do you think about the difference between craft, access, and actual feeling in music?
Notes From Under Ground: Well class is not the defining factor in how good music is, but it undoubtedly has something to do with the substance baked into it. I think there’s a lot of music out there that is well-produced, but empty. In contrast, the opposite also exists. Obviously having both is the goal. Music is serious in the sense that the cultural industry should nurture and enrich people’s lives. Slop always fades into obscurity in time, but why should it dominate the cultural focus in the moment and detract from the abundance of substantial artists in this world?
The song has this warm, piano-led, almost classic pop feel, even as the lyrics are taking aim at something pretty ugly. How did you want the sound of “Names In Blue” to play against the subject matter? What was your vision, sonically?
Notes From Under Ground: Again, the sardonic style of Steely Dan is a primary influence here. While visiting and then living in LA I was listening to them a lot while driving from place to place. A lot of Aja and Gaucho is about Los Angeles too, so I guess the influence is quite direct in this case.
“Names In Blue” feels like the start of a new chapter for Notes From Under Ground. What does this song open up for you?
Notes From Under Ground: I think the coming music is an indication of the direction I’ll be going for a while. As long as the music sounds original and the playing is good, it’ll pass. I don’t have very high standards.
— —
:: stream/purchase Names in Blue here ::
:: connect with Notes From Under Ground here ::
— —
Stream: “Names in Blue” – Notes From Under Ground
— — — —
Connect to Notes From Under Ground on
Bandcamp, Instagram
Discover new music on Atwood Magazine
© courtesy of the artist
© courtesy of the artist:: Stream Notes From Under Ground ::
