8.1

The Last Dinner Party Goes Big, Ornate and Bold on Prelude to Ecstasy

The South London quintet’s debut LP lives up to its great expectations.

By Elizabeth Braaten  |  February 2, 2024 | 11:00am
Music Reviews The Last Dinner Party
The Last Dinner Party Goes Big, Ornate and Bold on Prelude to Ecstasy

On the eve of their first album, The Last Dinner Party are already the stuff of legend. Channeling the cinematic theatrics of David Bowie, the literary romanticism of Kate Bush and the full-bodied vocals of Florence Welch, the South London five-piece’s breakout year saw them make waves so large they rippled all the way across the pond, selling out a headlining American tour before they’d played a single show in the States. After being awarded the 2024 Brit Award for Rising Star this past December, the band went on to win BBC Radio 1’s highly-coveted Sound of 2024 prize—joining an impressive alumni field that also includes Adele, Ellie Goulding and HAIM. Their eye-catching Renaissance-era aesthetics, indie-tinged baroque pop sound and gothic lyricism make this a band that doesn’t just deserve your attention—they demand it.

Georgia Davies (bass), Lizzie Mayland (guitar), Abigail Morris (vocals), Emily Roberts (guitar) and Aurora Nishevci (keys) met at university, bonding over a shared love of literature and music before deciding to form a band of their own. But like the underground-grown Arctic Monkeys before them, they built organic hype by playing live shows at small venues before releasing any songs—a near-extinct concept in the age of algorithm-dominated music discovery. Tastemaker Lou Smith proved to be the match that lit the fuse when he uploaded a video of one of their earliest shows to his Youtube page, quickly racking up thousands of views and sparking a label feeding frenzy. They eventually signed to Island Records, released the explosive debut single “Nothing Matters” last April and spent much of the past year on stage, playing the European festival circuit and opening for the likes of Florence + the Machine and Hozier.

Surrounded by the kind of frenetic mania not seen for a new band in years, prospects for their debut record are impossibly high. But with the oh-so-aptly-titled Prelude to Ecstasy, The Last Dinner Party don’t simply justify the hype surrounding them—they surpass it with flying colors. Collaborating with legendary English producer James Ford (known for his work with indie heavyweights like the Arctic Monkeys, Florence + the Machine, Gorillaz, Depeche Mode and HAIM, among others), the group recorded a rare lightning-in-a-bottle project that feels as much like a seminal work of literature as it does an album. Of course, upon first listen, many will be met with a slew of familiar favorites. “Caesar on a TV Screen” shines in all its 21st century-infused Shakespearean glory; “On Your Side,” with its gentle piano and airy vocals, plays like a futuristic Kate Bush track; guitar-pop heavy songs “My Lady of Mercy” and “Sinner” are irresistibly head-rolling. And who could forget the one that started it all—the aforementioned smash hit “Nothing Matters.”

But there’s also enough new material here to keep always-hungry-for-more fans satisfied.“Burn Alive,” an almighty roar of a track, sees the band blend raw emotion and metaphorical lyricism with colorful riffs and gargantuan percussion (“I am not the girl I set out to be, let me make my grief a commodity / Do what I can to survive / There is candle wax melting in my veins, so I keep myself standing in your flames / Burn, burn me alive”); “The Feminine Urge,” an electric art-pop anthem, is peppered with frank poeticism and feminist themes (“I am a dark red liver stretched out on a rock, all the poison I convert it and I turn it to love / Here comes the feminine urge, I know it so well / To nurture the wounds my mother held”).

The group wades into bold new territory on “Gjuha,” one of the project’s most memorable moments. Sung in Albanian, the track sees Nishevci take the reins for a song she says “is about me feeling shame [about] not knowing my mother tongue very well.” Meanwhile, the vivid storytelling and climactic finale of “Portrait of a Dead Girl,” a piano-driven, slow-burn ballad that bridges the gap between Nico and Lana Del Rey, make the track one of the group’s best offerings to date.

Those of us old enough to remember Tumblr’s glory days often lament the loss of the platform’s curatorial culture of cool. We long for the heyday of yesteryear where anonymous good citizen bloggers adeptly showed us the ropes of taste, whether that be the films of Sofia Coppola, the brilliance of Lorde’s Pure Heroine or the beautiful mess that was Skins. For this lost generation of bloggers, The Last Dinner Party simultaneously feel like a resurrection, a spiritual successor and a new chapter entirely all at once. Most of all, though, they are a gift. Prelude to Ecstasy is one of the strongest debut albums in recent memory, an incredible introduction that creates an inescapable feeling that we are bearing witness to the birth of a generational talent. If Act I is any indication, Act II will be something for the history books.

Elizabeth Braaten is a writer from Houston, Texas.

 
Join the discussion...