FEATURE:
After the Starter, the Main Course…
PHOTO CREDIT: Phoebe Fox for NME
Why The Last Dinner Party Are Set to Dominate 2024
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IT doesn’t seem like…
it was that long ago since I spotlighted The Last Dinner Party. You can follow them on their official website, Twitter, Instagram, Spotify and YouTube. When the London band had brought out their debut single, Nothing Matters, there was a mixture of excitement and those asking if they were industry plants. It suggested that the group had a label behind them giving them money and shaping their narrative. Rather than them being independent and unfunded in that sense. The amazing group, Abigail Morris, Lizzie Mayland, Emily Roberts, Georgia Davies, and Aurora Nishevci, release their debut album, Prelude to Ecstasy, on 2nd February. You are cordially invited to pre-order an album I can see being one of 2024’s very best. One sure to be nominated for the Mercury Prize. A group that had to respond to lies, criticism and general sexism have emerged with a string of wonderful singles and some incredible tour dates. I am going to write why we will see them dominate 2024. There are quite a few interviews that I want to bring in. With this being their first full professional year, it is impressive how many honours they have already scoped. In addition to winning the BRITs Rising Star 2024 award, BBC Radio 1 have included them in their shortlist of artists to watch next year have also tipped them for 2024 success. One feels that NME will announce them as one of their one hundred to look out for. After the likes of DIY spotlighted them as a standout act this year, the group have more than made good of that potential!
One big reason why I think they are going to be a name to watch in 2024 is that momentum they have already collected. It was unsurprising that The Last Dinner Party had to react to those accusing them of being industry plants. The Forty-Five asked why people are cynical of the female-led Indie wave that was happening last year and this. A group that had to battle sexism and almost prove themselves twice as hard as most, they will end this year with a lot of confidence and reassurance. It is the connection and closeness between the group members that makes them such a phenomenal proposition. One of the best live acts out there, reviews like this, this, and this show that The Last Dinner Party are a consistently brilliant from the stage. While the final review says that this year has been a wonderful one for women in Rock – a couple of the groups they mention I don’t think can be categorised as ‘Rock’ -, it is evident that female-led/female bands are ruling and showing they are festival-ready and hungry. Whilst there are many other artists that will add something brilliant to next year, I feel that the energy and talent that The Last Dinner Party has will increase next year. They will grow stronger and stronger.
I will round up with some thoughts. I want to source some interviews with The Last Dinner Party from the past couple of months. It has been a hugely busy year and one where they have achieved so much over these last couple of months. All signs point to them going global very soon. Square One Magazine spoke with an Art-Pop quintet that are producing music that is as original as anything I have heard in years:
“Being from London - the band found each other through meeting at University - plus gaining members such as Emily (guitarist) and Aurora (keys) through close friends introducing the band. The Last Dinner Party started as a live band: they played shows aiming to draw attention to themselves through word of mouth - which was deemed successful. When asked why the five-piece chose to build their status this way instead of the standard single, album, or promo roll-out - Aurora exclaims: “It felt like the natural thing to do. Start playing the music then figure out what the songs need to be, we wanted to let the songs live. Each time we play a song it changes a tiny bit and you learn something new. Once it felt ready we got in the studio. It is work-shopping essentially, it is so retro,” she jokes. She continues enthusiastically: “People cared about us despite not having music online”. This heartwarming reaction from the key player indicates the gratitude of The Last Dinner Party of people attending their shows despite the lack of streamable art.
If you attend a The Last Dinner Party show - the setlist is extensive - including the released singles and a catalogue of unreleased yet flawless material. Choosing the next single to be released is a principal thought for the band: “It is always difficult to decide what song we are gonna put out next,” Aurora ponders. “We have played these songs so much they have almost become different people with different personalities,” she adds. Aurora delves in and continues: “It is kinda imagining what we want people to sing along to next. When we go to the show what song do we want people to scream next.” Relating to the singles ‘Nothing Matters’ and ‘Sinner’ - the pianist describes them to be: “Quite poppy and dancey, I think they occupy a similar kind of space, but the rest of the album is a bit different, heavier.”
The Last Dinner Party hit the road on their all-most sold-out tour starting in October - performing in places such as Manchester, London, Glasgow, and Leeds - this band is no stranger to being on stage at this point and knows how to captivate a room of people - like a mythical siren call. “We are all excited to go see faces because it is all kinda new to us, we are so excited. We wanna go out for dinner and see the sights,” Aurora discusses. Swiftly adding in before the interview takes a turn, she exclaims: “I am so excited to go see Glasgow!”.
If anyone knows how to captivate a crowd and memorise thousands - while being covered head to toe in outrageous and theatrical costumes - it is Florence and The Machine - whom The Last Dinner Party had the honour of supporting in Ireland in June this year. “Oh my god! Yes!” the pianist yells when asked if the interview can take a b-line into that magical experience for the London five-piece. “She is such a role model. Her music, her aesthetic, and as a person, she lived up to it all. When we met her she ran towards Georgia and we were like do you know each other? Her advice was to follow your gut. What you think is good instinctually is almost always the right thing.” It is epically heart-warming to see such a powerful force as Florence Welch - guiding and supporting a group of five rockers in the right direction - and providing them with unforgettable advice that will undoubtedly shape The Last Dinner Party for the rest of their careers.
“From the beginning, we have given ourselves dress codes on stage, but before the band, I did not think much about style and fashion. But now I find it so freeing, it has allowed us to be creative and express ourselves,” Aurora explains when directing the band’s latest advisement for their audiences to come dressed up in specific dress codes for each show on their upcoming tour. These dress codes range from Greek Mythology, Victoriana and The Brothers Grimm. She adds: “I cannot wait to see everyone, I hope you all dress up,” a direct plea to anyone attending a show.
‘Nothing Matters’ has become a staple for the band - from the aesthetically and visually pleasing music video, combined with the ABBA / Bowie / Florence and The Machine-esque rhythm and lyrics - the success and admiration for the song has reached new heights, allowing The Last Dinner Party to get their foot in the door. While discussing what the song means to the group, Aurora claims: “It has always been the most joyful part of the set, it is just euphoria and joy. I cannot wipe the smile off my face seeing everyone singing and jumping along when we play it live”. It is a stand-out part of a The Last Dinner Party show - so if the opportunity arises - go scream: “And I will fuck you / Like nothing matters”.
The group are ending their year supporting none other than Irish folk icon - Hozier - on his Unreal Unearth tour. Another staple artist support locked in their grasp. But what is next for The Last Dinner Party? Where is the album? “Album is coming next year,” Aurora secretly hints and adds: “It is gonna be full on from next year for us”.
I forgot to mention, when discussing the awards and honours that have gone the way of The Last Dinner Party, that they were also given the Rising Star Award at the Rolling Stone UK Awards. They spoke to Rolling Stone UK around that. They look ahead to their debut album and some big dates. You can see that their diary is already pretty packed. Their gig on 1st February at London’s Roundhouse will be their biggest and most important date yet:
“When the last Dinner Party finally emerged this April with debut single ‘Nothing Matters’, four years after their formation and 18 months since that first post-lockdown live show, the response was rapturous. A dramatic, catchy and raucous opening statement, it established Morris as a charismatic and thoughtful vocalist from the jump, taking cues from Kate Bush and David Bowie but presenting a singular voice at the same time. Its video saw the band dressed like a funeral from a period drama, establishing a clear and vivid aesthetic. “Wait… this is your debut single?” the video’s top YouTube comment reads, such was the level of accomplishment and ambition on display.
Later in the year, they followed up with second single ‘Sinner’, a track both catchier and at times heavier than its predecessor. High on drama, it tells the story of a loss of innocence while longing for a time with simpler priorities and emotions: “I wish I knew you before it felt like a sin.” Later in the song, they break into a rapturous, transcendent backing vocal which melts into a shredded guitar solo. This heaviness is explored further on third single ‘My Lady of Mercy’, which has tinges of Queens of the Stone Age in its sludgy chorus.
“There is so much music online, and it’s difficult to digest,” Nischevi says. “If we released the whole album as soon as we recorded it, it’d be too much. Releasing singles gives people time to live with that and get ready for a bigger body of work.”
That will arrive in February in the form of debut album Prelude to Ecstasy. Recorded with James Ford (Arctic Monkeys, Florence + The Machine, Gorillaz and more) in the famous Church Studios in Crouch End, it expands upon the world built through the band’s formative live shows while keeping hold of the special energy created at those gigs. “He was a great fit because he’s not a producer that feels like he needs to put his stamp on things,” Mayland says. “He’s not trying to make it ‘a James Ford record’. He’s just so brilliant. He elevates it to a place that we never thought it could go.”
For Morris, the album isn’t a conceptual piece of work like The Last Dinner Party as a whole, but representative of “an elevated honesty”. She says: “The lyrics, the music, the way we look — none of it is an act or a character. It’s all us, but in our platonic form rather than a Ziggy Stardust-type of character. It’s us at our full capacity.”
IN THIS PHOTO: The Last Dinner Party backstage at the Rolling Stone UK Awards/PHOTO CREDIT: Kit Oates
Among the new tracks on the album is ‘On Your Side’, the band’s most uncomplicated, pure declaration of love yet. “When it’s 4am and your heart is breaking,” Morris sings with visceral emotion, “I will hold your hands to stop them from shaking.” Elsewhere, ‘Portrait of a Dead Girl’ has a grandeur reminiscent of Queen with a dash of Wolf Alice’s rock’n’roll snarl.
Throughout, Morris inhabits characters, tells stories and interrogates her own emotions with the ability and thoughtfulness of a songwriter decades into their career. Maybe most striking is ‘Beautiful Boy’, a flute-assisted slow jam about a friend of the singer’s. “I had a really clear thing that I wanted to say,” she recalls.
“It’s about a friend of mine, who is a very beautiful boy, and I remember I was talking to him once, and he was describing a holiday he had gone on on his own, where he just went off, hitchhiking around Spain. He lost his phone, had nothing — he was just relying on the kindness of strangers. Wherever he went, everyone adored him and took him in and gave him things, and it just made me think, ‘What’s it like to go around life being an exquisite man?’
“When you’re a beautiful woman, it’s a different thing that has a different kind of privilege, and also comes with its own horrors,” Morris adds. “Being a normal man has a different set of privileges, but what is it like to be not only a man, but a man that’s so beautiful no one would ever say no to you? He came to one of our gigs once, stole a bottle of rum from the venue, got caught, but then got let off because, and I quote, ‘What a handsome thief!’”
Such was the clarity of the artistic vision presented by The Last Dinner Party from the off that the band were inevitably boxed into certain corners. “We were seeing some interviews, even from the very start, where people would say, ‘Pride and Prejudice, Bridgerton, corsets!’ And that’s one aspect of what we like, but very quickly we realised that we don’t want to just be that one thing. We want to be able to do stuff that’s more modernist alongside that and keep evolving.”
For Morris, the present and future of The Last Dinner Party isn’t slowly moving towards a final form, but allowing themselves to change and grow, incorporating different styles and aesthetics and sounds while maintaining their core DNA. “We are what we are in each fully realised bit of the band’s history, and each fully realised bit will be different than the last one.”
“You want a thumbprint on all your music,” Nischevi offers. “A lot of the best artists, and the ones that stand the test of time, all have their thumbprint on everything, but they’ve also had a whole career’s worth of development and change. In among all of that, there’s something that’s cohesive about all of it. There’s something special in that”.
PHOTO CREDIT: Phoebe Fox for NME
I am going to come to an NME interview from earlier this year. They were among those keen to speak with the band of the moment. One who might have an even more acclaimed and notable 2024 than 2023. Whether you see them as Art-Pop or Baroque-Pop, they are the most talked-about group around. Queens and monarchs who are in no danger of letting their feet off of the gas:
“This afternoon, the band ground themselves in another force amidst the chaos – each other. Just sitting around in the studio, they are an inexhaustible source of their own entertainment, with comedy bits, meme references and inside jokes flying around each conversation like stray bullets. “This is Georgia, our tall Australian prankster”, Morris grins as she introduces the bassist to NME. And don’t get them started on Mayland’s “scarily accurate” Mark Corrigan impression. “Being in this band is what I imagine it’s like to have siblings,” Morris says, to the tune of a circus theme.
From this whirlwind of big personalities and overlapping voices, it seems inevitable that a visual identity as striking and resplendent as theirs would form. “From the beginning, before we even had one rehearsal, we decided that our visuals would be just as important as the music”, says Morris. “We wanted the whole thing to be an entire spectacle.” Davies continues: “The glam rock, the historical fashion… It all comes from the ‘magpie’ visual culture we grew up with in the age of Tumblr. You’d be scrolling through this dispassionate list of random shit all the time, just this massive blob of stuff. It would go from Pride & Prejudice to David Bowie to Effie Stonem from Skins, and you could pick up anything that looked interesting.”
PHOTO CREDIT: Phoebe Fox for NME
The world of The Last Dinner Party – a “nebulous and ever-changing” place where theatrical stylings and ABBA meet The Secret History – manifests in live shows, where fans are free to indulge in their wildest aesthetic desires. Playing a sold out show in LA last month, the band were floored when fans showed up wearing hand-embroidered biker jackets. “It was so obviously ‘Last Dinner Party’, even if it wasn’t the most obvious iteration of our aesthetic”, Davies says. “There’s no set ‘dress code’ at our shows. It’s all about self-expression and community. There’s so much love in the room”, says Mayland.
The hotly-anticipated ‘Prelude to Ecstasy’ is testament to this: a collection that includes road-tested material from their live shows (including ‘Caesar On A TV Screen’ and ‘Beautiful Boy’), as well as new songs – a true culmination of their two-year anniversary as a band. Committed to the classical tradition in which they play, the album even features a musical prelude and a coda, each sprinkled with motifs from their other tracks. “Our whole mission statement is very theatrical,” Morris explains. “We love being intentional and indulgent. I mean, we have a composer! We want to flex that!” she says, gesturing proudly towards Nishevci.
PHOTO CREDIT: Phoebe Fox for NME
The band’s rapid, explosive success has led to them being the subject of continued online discourse, largely based around false presumptions that they are “industry plants”. They are frustrated by these comments, which seem a cruel and ironic punishment for being so polished and deliberate with everything they’ve done so far. “Do we have to address that?”, Morris asks candidly. She shares with NME that they’re trying to phase out this particular discussion point. Still, they ponder how they want to respond anyway. “We take it as a compliment”, Davies says, wryly, after some thought. “If people think it’s too good to be true, then all we can say is thank you.”
For now, The Last Dinner Party aren’t thinking about the doubters – or even how far they’ve come and how far they’ll go. They’re living minute-to-minute: checking their outfits in the mirror, charging their phones by the wall, huddling together to discuss where they’re going to fit rehearsal time into the next few days. Crucially, they’re making sure to enjoy every second. “No one else in the world knows what it’s like to go through what we’re going through,” Mayland concludes. “This is something that’s so precious to us”.
It would be too easy to say that the sheer quality of the songs is the reason as to why The Last Dinner Party have had such a massive year and will be runaway and unstoppable successes next year too. There is the friendship and chemistry within the group. Their take on Pop is refreshing at a time when there is a lot of same-sounding Pop. Artists coming from TikTok with something quite familiar and over-copied. Many smaller Pop acts having a very similar vibe. Massive Pop artists stealing a lot of focus. A breath of fresh air against all of this are The Last Dinner Party. There are very few others that sound like them and are doing that they are. They engage with fans on social media and seem a lot more relatable and accessible than a lot of Pop artists. Their live shows are legendary already. Various sites and sources have tried to explain what makes The Last Dinner Party so special. Their fashion choices mixes the elegant and gothic. Almost like rebellious outsiders at a fancy ball. Mixing something from the 19th century with modern-day chic, they have created a very eye-catching and distinct aesthetic. That extends to their music videos and artwork. They are extremely distinct and memorable. The Last Dinner Party are unique and different. Though there is this contemporary relevance that means they do not just appeal to a single demographic. They have such a wide fanbase. Their songs switch between energised and foot-tapping numbers to ballads. Some of their lyrics call for unity and togetherness. There is interesting instrumentation and moments in every song. Unusual progressions and unexpected twists combined with this distinct sense of harmony that runs throughout. Whatever the magic ingredient(s) is, nobody now can say that The Last Dinner Party are flashes in the pan of just a fad! They are very much here for the long-run. After some wonderful gigs including Glastonbury, there are plenty of great memories for the group to reflect on. The title of their debut album, Prelude to Ecstasy, might suggest that it is the foreplay and foreword to something explosive and epic. I would argue that has already happened - and that their hotly-anticipated debut will confirm them…
AS modern-day legends.