I am regularly wary of bands that have been heavily hyped as often they cannot match that hype in recording and performance. On that basis, I did not expect to like the debut album from The Last Dinner Party. Actually, that stands true, I don’t like ‘Prelude To Ecstasy’, I bloody love it. The album flows together like not many albums before. I also feel, particularly in this modern age of streaming, that there is not a single track here that I would want to skip. It seems the album format is not quite dead yet, The Last Dinner party has given it a great boost! Although I can sense several possible influences, this is a very original band. Notably, I can hear small references to Queen, 10cc, Supertramp, Kate Bush, Abba, and Sparks to name just a few.
The band formed in London back in 2021 and consists of Abigail Morris, Lizzie Mayland, Emily Roberts, Georgia Davies, and Aurora Nishevci. I love the huge ambition and low arrogance that means the band has included a gorgeously orchestrated overture to open the album. It introduces a cinematic scope to the whole record and makes you want to listen to the whole thing, and I have, quite a few times so far. All five of the band’s singles to date are included and the familiarity with some of those tracks does not demean in the slightest the overall quality. The immaculate “Nothing Matters” and striking “Caesar On A TV Screen” are the best of the bunch in my opinion. I also feel that “My Lady Of Mercy” rocks like an absolute hellhound and might fit onto the kind of concept album that the Who used to be so good at. “Burn Alive” has a wonderfully dark vibe and strikes me as something Florence Welch might write if she was coming out of a fight with the black dog of depression. The instrumentation on “The Feminine Urge” evokes some of the best early sixties girl group hits. Although I can’t imagine any of those groups getting away with some of the stunningly powerful lyrics like “I am a dark red liver stretched out on the rocks. All the poison, I convert it and I turn it to love. Here comes the feminine urge, I know it so well“. That said the Crystals, who once recorded “He Hit Me (It Felt Like a Kiss)”, might have got away with it.
“Beautiful Boy” is Baroque Pop at its finest and a full-on emotionally charged ballad that once again is evocative of Florence And The Machine. The shortest track on the album is “Gjuha” which according to Aurora translates from Albanian into Tongue. She has previously said that it describes her shame at not knowing the language of her mother country very well. It provides a wonderfully mystical interlude in the intensity of the flow of the record. “Portrait Of A Dead Girl” nods to a dreamlike duet between Lana del Ray and Kate Bush. Is it possible to get any deeper and darker than the album closer “Mirror”? I doubt it, it is a song with the ability to give you chills and closes this delightful set of songs perfectly with an orchestral finale to go full circle back to the overture.
So yes I am now a huge fan of The Last Dinner Party and ‘Prelude To Ecstasy’. But there is an elephant in the room isn’t there? All the talk about whether or not they are an “industry plant”. If you thought the hype around them was huge then I reckon the conspiracies around them being an industry plant are even bigger. The band has previously said that they believed that these accusations resulted from misogyny in the music industry. Following the struggles that Rebecca Ferguson, Delilah Bon (a.k.a. Lauren Tate) and others have had I suspect that this is true. In a recent NME interview the band said “If you don’t like our music, or our vibes, that’s okay! But it’s not fine to accuse us of not writing these songs or existing as a band in our own right. None of us have famous or industry parents either, shock horror!” Do I think they are an industry plant? Of course not, I doubt there is anyone in the industry with the intellect or nous to be able to create an industry plant. On top of that it would soon become obvious given the amount of people that would need to be in on it. In my view, people should dump the conspiracy theory shite and just follow what will, I am sure, become a truly gifted and great band. This is a contender for album of the year.
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