TRACK REVIEW: The Last Dinner Party – Sinner

TRACK REVIEW:

The Last Dinner Party – Sinner

9.5/10

RELEASE DATE:

30th June, 2023

LABEL:

Universal-Island Records

PRODUCER:

James Ford

Sinner is available via:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IfVpq86tOw8

_________

AS we speak…

The Last Dinner Party are preparing for a gig in Switzerland (tomorrow). They are pretty booked up until the end of the year. Consisting of singer Abigail Morris, bassist Georgia Davies, keyboardist Aurora Nishevci and guitarists Lizzie Mayland and Emily Roberts, they are one of the most talked-about and brilliant groups in the country. I did recently feature them as part of my Spotlight feature. I wanted to review their new single as their debut, Nothing Matters, was extraordinary and highly-regarded. Before reviewing Sinner, I am going to cover a few interviews that The Last Dinner Party have been involved with. It is a way for anyone new to the group too discover more about them. I have just written about live videos and how they are replacing music videos. I am not sure whether there is going to be an official video for Sinner, but live videos are a great way of producing a visual for a song and demonstrating how it will translate to the stage. It is a way for people to see what an artist is like in the live setting. I have dropped in the live video in addition to the lyric video, as they both bring in something different. It is exciting getting down to studying and diving inside the new single from The Last Dinner Party.

Before getting to Sinner, there are some interviews that I want to highlight. The Guardian featured the group in May. As I will highlight, there was a lot of unwarranted criticism aimed at The Last Dinner Party when Nothing Matters arrived and blew up. Many thought they were industry plants or were already signed to a big label and were there just to get hype. Rather than this being a fair judgement of a group who got so much buzz after one single, it reveals the way many view women in the industry – and the fact a male band would not be judged and questioned if they came onto the scene and got this instant acclaim:

“If you regularly loiter in the indiest corners of Twitter, or have even glanced at the NME homepage recently, there’s a decent chance you have at least heard of The Last Dinner Party. It’s possibly less likely that you’ve actually heard them: they have released just the one track so far. Despite this, in the last fortnight the band have received breathless write-ups everywhere from Rolling Stone to the Spectator, for their raucous live performances and baroque-inflected pop.

That sudden rush of hype has sparked a backlash: eyebrows raised on social media over the band’s big-name management and major label status; whispers about them being “industry plants” or – even worse – nepo babies. Which in turn has prompted a pointed rebuttal from the band (Not nepo babies! Not manufactured!) and their supporters. All of this, in the best part of a fortnight. The discourse is already in runaway train mode, and if you’ve been following it all you may have already had your fill. But I do think there’s something fascinating about the whole affair – a mix of old-school buzz band hype, and very modern concerns about the music industry and who rises and falls within it.

First though, a quick primer: The Last Dinner Party are a Brixton-formed five piece who have been a going concern for a year, and are signed to Island Records and the management firm QPrime. They’ve spent much of the last 12 months gigging, including a support slot for the Rolling Stones, a detail that has been leapt upon by critics as evidence of industry plant status, although (as this thoughtful Clash piece on the whole brouhaha points out) it was essentially a bottom-of-the-bill slot at a day festival in Hyde Park – a decent get, no doubt, but perhaps not the massive push it has been painted as.

In fact, it’s notable that there seems to have been zero mainstream press coverage of the band until the release of their first single, Nothing Matters, a few weeks ago. Then came the sudden deluge of approving articles. In fairness, much of that deluge is down to the quality of Nothing Matters, a Kate Bush-meets-Warpaint stomp with a chorus you could imagine being belted out at a decent sized festival this summer. But it’s impossible to deny that having big labels and management firms pushing it in the direction of journos can’t exactly hurt.

What’s striking is how atypical this buzz-building feels, compared with how most overnight successes occur these days: through prominent slots on Spotify playlists, canny use of TikTok, a well-placed sync. Compared to the methods used by, say, PinkPantheress, The Last Dinner Party’s method of gigging intensely and earning a glowing write-up in the NME feels about as current as sending your seven-inch to Radio Luxembourg. (It should be noted that all of those other routes to overnight success are usually aided by, or even dependent on, some helpful nudges from labels or/and big management companies – but they’re helpful nudges that aren’t perhaps as easy to notice as a sudden influx of media attention.)

The criticism levelled at The Last Dinner Party feels both very current and highly anachronistic. Objecting to a band signing to a major: how very Gen X of you. And didn’t poptimism wipe away all those concerns about which groups were manufactured and which were not? The difference, I suppose, is that The Last Dinner Party are nominally indie, a scene that can still be prickly around issues of authenticity – particularly when women are the focus (see also: Wet Leg). Some of the criticism though has been thoughtful and valid: see this well-argued Twitter thread from the lead singer of synth-punk trio Kill, the Icon!, who, rather than attacking The Last Dinner Party themselves, points out the wider structural inequalities at play in the music industry that lead to certain bands soaring to ubiquity while others struggle for even the slightest recognition”.

This is a phenomenal group that do not need to be compared to anyone or written off in that way. Whilst many have been quick to, it is clear there is something bracingly and pleasingly original about the Brixton group. Under the Radar sat down with them in May to discuss Nothing Matters and how they have come into the industry with a bang:

“Enter The Last Dinner Party (formerly The Dinner Party), a band with a lineup consisting of Abigail Morris on vocals, Georgia Davies on bass, Lizzie Mayland on guitar, Aurora Nishevci on keys, and Emily Roberts on lead guitar. Their live performances started attracting buzz pretty from the get-go, as rumors spread about an exciting emerging new band. One person who caught wind of the hype was Lou Smith, aka the South London scene’s unofficial videographer. Smith’s YouTube channel is a veritable treasure trove of emerging bands from the area, and he was on hand to capture The Dinner Party’s third-ever gig. It was a pivotal moment that changed the trajectory of the band’s career forever.

I sit down for a chat with bassist Georgia Davies and lead singer Abigail Morris as they enjoy a pint and talk excitedly about The Last Dinner Party’s serendipitous beginnings. “We met in college doing A-levels,” explains Davies. “But we really began bonding after going to gigs in South London and seeing bands at the likes of the Brixton Windmill. It’s such a vibrant scene, and we felt totally inspired by the music that was being made. We definitely wanted to be part of that in some way.”

They began writing and practicing, and within a few months, started playing live. That’s when Lou Smith filmed their third-ever gig. Morris gushes, “He’s our hero! He’s the reason we’re here.” Davies chimes in, “We were a new band without any representation. After that video went online, our email inbox started blowing up! We were getting correspondence from labels, managers, PRs—all of them referencing this one video they’d seen on YouTube.”

PHOTO CREDIT: Dan Sullivan

All new bands face the double-edged sword of journalistic comparison, and The Last Dinner Party are no exception. Some heavyweight names have been bandied about, comparing their sound to everything from Kate Bush and David Bowie to Sparks and, more recently, Marina. Someone even wrote on YouTube that one of their compositions, the beautiful “On Your Side,” had replaced “Starman” as their favorite ever song. “I saw that comment, I was like, ‘WTF! That’s mad!’” says a clearly astonished Morris. “It’s obviously a huge compliment, although I have mixed feelings about comparisons. I’ve always been a huge music fan and was brought up surrounded by music like Bowie, Kate Bush, and Queen, so we’d be lying if we said we weren’t influenced or inspired by such great artists. However, we didn’t set out to sound like the next Kate Bush or Marina and the Diamonds. We want to sound like The Last Dinner Party.”

Davies acknowledges the usefulness of musical reference points for writers. “I can see why writers like to use comparisons, but the variety of them shows that people haven’t been able to pigeonhole us into one particular style or genre, which is a good thing.” Meanwhile, Morris expresses her incredulity at the comparison by some made with ABBA, on the band’s soaring debut single “Nothing Matters.” “I mean, don’t get me wrong, ABBA are legends, but really? I just can’t hear that, at all,” she says with a laugh.

And speaking of legends, it has been widely reported that the band have already shared the stage with greats such as Nick Cave and The Rolling Stones. Something that must have been mind-blowing, given that the band only began gigging in 2021. “Well, sharing a stage with Nick Cave is pushing it a bit,” revealed Morris. “The truth is we played on a little stage, which just happened to be at the same festival. Nick Cave was actually on the huge stage about three hours later. But we did share the same air with the great man. We are huge fans, and we went to his book signing just to get closer to him”.

I am going to move things on a bit. The Last Dinner Party were busy touring and crafting their sound before their debut single came out. Now, with more dates and experience under their belt, it is becoming clear that they are potential festival headliners. Lots of people are already excited about the possibility of an album. It is understandable that there is a lot of interest in the group. NME featured The Last Dinner Party. Highlighting them as a band that will take the industry by storm, it does seem like they will have a very busy future:

“You mentioned you’ve been recording quite a bit. Is there a finished album hidden away somewhere?

Abigail: “I don’t know if we’re at liberty to answer that question. It’s coming, you know, it’s alive. We did it in Church Studios in Crouch Hill, with [Arctic Monkeys and Foals producer] James Ford, who’s a fucking wonderful, kind, talented man, who really just understood us in a way that no one else has musically. It was just a complete dream come true. There’s been so much intensity around us for so long, so it was nice to have that month of peace.”

Georgia: “We’ll have more music by the end of the year.”

Aurora: “Some things that we play now are not on there, but they might come back in the future.”

Abigail: “I feel like the album, in its state now, wouldn’t be the case if we hadn’t been playing live for so long. We were really able to do a lot of experimenting and feeling the emotion of the songs live, and I think that’s informed it.”

Last summer you supported The Rolling Stones at Hyde Park, as a band without a debut single. How surreal was that?

Lizzie: “I did wonder if we were all just going to explode.”

Georgia: “It was one of the best days of my life. I remember pulling up to the stage and the back of it was like a cathedral.”

Abigail: “However, now we have a vendetta against Mick Jagger because he snubbed us. I’m going on record, NME: Mick Jagger’s a hack. Sam Fender and Courtney Barnett were also opening for them, and then Mick Jagger got up on stage, and was like, ‘I’d like to thank our support acts’. We were all standing there like, ‘Oh my god. He’s gonna say our name! Everything will be right in the world’. And then he said, ‘Courtney Barnett and Sam Fender… you guys are amazing.’ We all started screaming ‘justice’ and it all got a bit out of hand. His days are numbered.

With a mixture of Baroque Pop and Punk, there is something both edgy and accessible about The Last Dinner Party. One of the reasons why I have selected an interview from The Line of Best Fit is because, as they state, it is unusual that every member of a group wants to speak in an interview. Whether that is because they want to be seen only as a single unit with no one person speaking for them or they each want to have their say, you get to know each member of the quintet better this way:

“The bandmates all live in London, meeting at keyboardist Aurora Nishevci’s flat to plot new concepts and music. The most unsurprising thing is that they met during their university’s fresher’s week, a time when many bands are formed but hardly commit to following through on making their dreams come true post-uni. That isn’t the case for The Last Dinner Party.

In April, the band’s debut single “Nothing Matters” was finally unveiled, serving us a platter of florid prose tied together with operatic-style notes. The track was the catalyst to a lot of feedback across the UK music scene — the majority of it positive and the rest of it being a little unfounded. As of late, music has felt carnivorous — songs are as easily digested as they are created, quickly moving on to the next big thing. In addition to that, critics and naysayers are quick to jump at the chance to tear apart anything that becomes talked about online, drawing blood before a band even has a chance to find its footing.

If anything, it’s only emboldened the five members to push on — all due to their tenacity and how listeners have devoured the track almost 4.5 million times to date. “It has been overwhelming in a lovely way,” says Abigail Morris, the band’s lead vocalist. “We were excited for it to come out and we hoped that it would be received well because we’re proud of it. We know it’s a great song, but the extent and the ferocity in which it's been enjoyed and sort of blown up is really not what we expected.”

After touching on the fact that their debut single took ages to come out — before they played shows and opened for larger acts — the band laughs. “[The reaction] was suddenly worth waiting to do that,” says bassist Georgia Davies. “People at the live shows were asking for any music at all and it was definitely an arduous process waiting for it to come out. Hearing people who feel connected with us from the live shows now being able to hear the song… It was so worth it.”

PHOTO CREDIT: Brennan Bucannan

The beauty of not having the pressure to release music constantly and, instead, focusing on playing shows first helped inform and perfect the upcoming larger body of work. It permitted them to have the space to try things out and play the songs first to help inform how they were recorded and produced. “Before we get to the final version of the recorded track, we'll play it live,” says keyboardist Aurora Nishevci. “Sometimes we'll make a demo before but then we have to play it in a room and get a better picture of what that song is and what we want it to be. I think playing [the songs] live imbues it with confidence. Last year when we recorded the album, we remembered the things that people like because we played them live so many times. Having that was essential to recording it. “We wanted the energy and the theatricality of our live shows to just be at the very center of the of the record,” Davies continues. “I think that's what was the most important thing that we wanted to capture when we went in [to record].”

The live shows also helped the band shape how they want to approach their music, artistry, and vision for the future. “Everyone here is a songwriter and performer in their own right and has lots of experience doing it in different contexts,” explains Davies. “But the last year has been us figuring out The Last Dinner Party. What does it mean? What do we sound like? Do we stick to certain sounds? What themes do we live in?”

“It’s also been a lot of observing other live music and seeing what we want to incorporate into our live shows too,” says Morris. “Things like songwriting and performance have evolved a lot [since first becoming a band]. The live shows has always been the focus and what defines us. We’ve become more and more confident and the show has developed from there”.

As lovers of visuals and theatrics, the band refuses to hand off their creative control to anyone — resulting in them creating their mood boards for everything from their artwork to videos to their tweets, typically penned by Morris.

PHOTO CREDIT: Brennan Bucannan

“There was no other option for us,” she proudly proclaims. “From the very, very beginning when we started, even before we played live or had more than five rehearsals together, we knew that visuals were going to be half of what made this band important to us. We're very ambitious and very distinct on how we want to look, so it's important for us to just have complete control over everything. We love working with other people and collaborating, that is our thing, and I think that comes through.”

“Sinner,” the band’s latest song, is a call-to-arms of sorts — a declaration to a lover chanting “I wish I knew you / before it felt like a sin.” “I wrote that one,” states Mayland. “The story is about my relationship with London and where I grew up, which is a very, very rural small town. It has prejudices and is a bit small-minded socially. “‘Sinner’ is about converting to a place where you feel freer be yourself and express your sexuality, but also long for that place that you were so at home in. I had a nice childhood and it's something I miss, but those two things don't feel like they can coexist. It’s kind of a made-up story about if I met someone who could represent both those things and like me as an entire person rather than one or the other.”

"One of the huge reasons for us wanting to start this band is so that we can make something that we would have wanted to see at 15 or 16 as young women."

In true The Last Dinner Party fashion, the band notes visual companions to the track: think Portrait of a Lady on Fire and Wuthering Heights (2011) with the lush rocky landscape of the Yorkshire Moors and getting whipped in the face by the wind.

Between the two studio releases and the live clips online, it’s clear how conversational the band’s lyrics are while also maintaining a sense of introspection and a dash of magical realism. When prompted with the question of how they write and carve out a space for themselves while still giving space to listeners to find themselves in the music, Morris says when she writes, it comes straight from her diary. “I tend to write in my diary in a very romanticized way,” she laughs. “I think it's funny because I can be really specific in what I talk about and sometimes, the more specific you are about an experience or a romantic breakup, the more meaningful it is for someone even though they haven't been through the exact same thing. The more distinct a lyric is, the more someone can relate to it in a more personal way”.

There is one more interview I want to bring in before getting to the review. ISIS chatted with a magnificent group who have rightly been heralded as ones to watch. With a distinct passion and ambition, I think we will be talking about The Last Dinner Party for many years more. I am interested to see what happens when they inevitable break America and have a string of dates there. It can not be too far away:

“I wanted to delve a bit more into their songwriting process. As they seem so centred around live performance, I wondered if they were conscious of this whilst writing. But, for Abigail at least, the process begins on the piano and “it has to be incredibly insular. I can’t think about how people are going to perceive it, or if people are going to like it, because then that gets in my head and is quite damaging. The process is pure catharsis and emotion and highly personal.” Once the band starts rehearsing and playing new material, “everyone comes in and adds, and that’s when we start thinking ‘this is going to build here’ and ‘this bit’s more of a sing-along moment’ and ‘let’s do a five-part harmony’. We don’t write to try and impress anyone other than ourselves, we just work to make something the five of us are obsessed with and then we start considering [the live element]”.

Their single ‘Nothing Matters’ began as a piano ballad, and “as we started working on it, it transformed into this euphoric, bombastic thing”, Abigail notes. Aurora is classically trained, having studied at the Guildhall School of Music and Drama. She wrote and arranged “huge horn and string parts” and then Emily, also at Guildhall, added her guitar solo which “transformed it into a real beast from this quite soft piano ballad”. The lyrics are both tender and rough, from ‘a sailor and a nightingale dancing in convertibles’ to asserting ‘I will fuck you like nothing matters’, which Abigail believes was “not superconscious, but just happened because I was trying to write the most honest, purest love song that I could, which would then have to include stuff that’s incredibly tender, sweet and delicate. Sometimes saying “fuck” is the only way you can express some passion. I wanted an honest, raw, carnal expression of love. I find it hard to write love songs from a place of happiness and peace, which I was in at the time, it’s a lot easier to write about turmoil and heartbreak, and so I wanted to do my then relationship justice by including all the beautiful and ugly parts of it.” This range of delicate and harsh, turmoil and euphoria, are what future releases promise. “It’s about a dynamic range of emotions, but all of them experienced intensely – emotional ecstasy. That includes pain and joy, and not shying away from either of them. Finding joy in just being alive and feeling every emotion so deeply is what to expect from the rest of the album,” Abigail states – not only lyrically but musically. The string parts are “tender but also savage” Georgia elaborates, opening a “cinematic” and “theatrical” sonic world: “If the music could speak, it would be saying the same things as the lyrics”.

PHOTO CREDIT: Flora Bigham and Caitlin Smith

As the interview draws to a close, I ask if they have any advice, particularly to young musicians wanting to enter the industry: “Go to gigs, be curious, be open, be interested” Abigail responds. “Take on every opportunity that comes your way while you’re getting started, because there’s nothing better than playing live to get you out there. You can put out songs on SoundCloud or Spotify and a few people will hear them, but if you’re out there on stage, night after night, you’re getting in front of so many new people who will then come to the next one and the next one. Play as many gigs as you can and go to as many gigs as you can”, Georgia encourages. Abigail adds: “Knock on every door. Before this band, I was going around London for about a year, dragging my piano around to any venue that would have me, playing for about five people, which is so valuable. Playing live is the way to go.” I wrap up with a check-in on what they’ve last listened to: Sufjan Stevens, Nine Inch Nails, Johnny Cash and Jerry Lee Lewis.

The band has received much attention in recent weeks, dubbed “the best new band you haven’t heard yet” by NME. Their recent (and only) single, ‘Nothing Matters’, has been described as “unstoppable” by Clash. All this focus has led to online anger, with Twitter users writing them off as ‘industry plants’ and ‘nepo babies’. They are experiencing, it seems, a similar response to Wet Leg, the indie rock band that exploded onto the music scene in 2021. Jessie Thompson wrote in The Spectator that this obsession with authenticity “exposes a strange double standard in music”, with female musicians having to defend themselves for finding success. These conversations unjustly overshadow what’s so great about this band: their music and shows”.

PHOTO CREDIT: Patrick Gunning for DORK

Let’s get down to the song of the hour: the brilliant new one from The Last Dinner Party. After the magnificent Nothing Matters singled them out as a force to watch closely, Sinner builds on that but adds new elements into the mix. Since Nothing Matters came out, the band has spent much of its time on the road In addition to playing Glastonbury recently, they have also performed opening slots for Florence and The Machine. They are set to play Green Man, End of the Road, Latitude, and Reading & Leeds. By summer’s end, they will be heading out on a U.K, headlining tour, followed by an arena tour of the U.K. and Europe supporting Hozier. It is no wonder people want to see The Last Dinner Party on the road! In regards Sinner, guitarist Lizzie Mayland explains how (the single) is a story of self-acceptance; a longing for the past and present self to become one. I wanted to have a closer look at the song. I love the piano riff at the start. Summoning a sense of anxiety mixed with racing thoughts and self-doubt, there is something weighty and emotional regarding the sound. Rather than go in with guitars or something attacking, The Last Dinner Party deliver something that has this punctuated and racing heartbeat. A beautiful and intriguing sound that leads into some intriguing words. I am not sure who the person at the centre of Sinner is but, as the first verse reveals: “I wish I knew you/Back when we were both small/I wish I knew you/Now I have gotten too tall/I wish I knew/When touch was innocent/I wish I knew you/Before it felt like a sin”. Maybe referring to a childhood friend or someone who is new into their orbit, I like that suggestion that, had they known each other at childhood, this developing situation or romance would not feel so wrong. Something innocent and playful in their infant years – where there are no romantic feelings – is miles away from a scenario that appears elicit and cursed. The word ‘sin’ has been used a lot through the years. Whether it is the Pet Shop Boys or Madonna, sin/sinner has various connotations and meanings to various artists.

PHOTO CREDIT: UMG

I am not religious myself. I don’t think many of the artists who use the word either. It seems like a word that has this weight ands biblical heft. Rather than something being wrong and worthy of judgment by society – where the punishment might seem small or temporary – a sin carries much more weight and drastic repercussions. Perhaps The Last Dinner Party feel that this thing is so wrong and unholy that they will lose their soul or be condemned. The opening few lines of Sinner have this jumpy and springy piano. The vocal has a sound and delivery that puts me in mind of Sparks or even Regina Spektor. It is direct yet has this quality and delivery that puts me in mind of those artists. Soon, there is this burst and rush that brings in strings and percussion. Adding something weather-beaten and harder-edged, this sense that “(Felt like a sin)/Before it felt like a sin”. Whether referring to sex or a relationship, or even something like an ill-judged moment of confiding in someone they shouldn’t, even though it was wrong and felt unwise before it happened, there was a part of their heart and brain that urged them to proceed. At under three minutes, Sinner is a direct and economic song that packs so much in. Bringing in religious imagery together with a sense of regret and confusion, I love the lyrics of the song. In addition to so many things, The Last Dinner Party are able to paint provocative and vivid imagery with their words: “There’s nothing for me/Here where the world is small/But how you touch me/For that I’d leave it all/Back in the city/Cold eyes and lips of dust/So turn and face me/Turn to the alter of lust”. It is interesting seeing that blend of the spiritual/religious sitting alongside the modern and romantic. This idea that there will be judgment or penance. Perhaps trying to wash themselves free of sin and something wrong, the line “Pray for me on your knees” is repeated like a mantra. This idea of forgiveness perhaps? Maybe our heroine feels like she is beyond salvation. As the band have explained Sinner relates to the desire for the past and present to become one, I wonder if the track is about a bad decision or darker moment that has lingered and haunted for too long. By merging things together, it gets rid of this black mark and bad event. I think the listener is free to interpret the song how they like and imagine what is being referred to.

As a slight detour before I get back to the brilliant Sinner. I did muse as to whether a debut album was coming soon. I forgot to mention that the band have said they recorded one at Church Studios in Crouch Hill (with James Ford). Spending a month or so in the studio, it offered a sense of peace and concentration at a time when they have a lot of attention and demand coming their way. I am not sure what the track order will be, but I feel like Sinner would sit well as maybe track three or four – and have Nothing Matters as the second track (which would follow on from something new that would give the album a fresh and unfamiliar start). With incredible guitars, punchy beats, and some great melody and elasticity from the bass, it all supports and illustrates the vocals from Abigal Morris. Such a tight group with a distinct and incredible sound, they are also very much in their own league when it comes to lyrical imagery. Maybe with a slight nod to Florence + The Machine in terms of some of the lyrical inspiration, you get this almost ancient and historic religious heft against something common and modern. That idea of self-acceptance and cleansing after moments of doubt and ill judgment. It is something we can all relate to. Words like “The crystal stream/Wash the sin from your back/Cleanse my soul/Make me whole/Dance in/the morning glow/Hold me we can’t go back/Before it felt like a sin” actually puts you down by the water and in this moment of rebirth; wondering what happened to compel such a need for affirmation and transformation. Just before those lines, there is a shift in pace – the group are masterful when it comes to dynamics and almost giving their songs different acts! – as we get some spiritual and ghostly backing vocals as the instruments are taken down. Almost a prayer and sermon being delivered amidst the noise and rush of chaos and fire: “Stay through the night/I’d spend the mornings by your side”. There are so many things to highlight in Sinner. The instrumentation is brilliant and balanced. You get so many different moods and a few shifts, but it seems cohesive and focused. The more you play Sinner, the more that is revealed – though the song’s truth remains in the heart and mind of its authors. There is this nice end that puts to mind a preacher punching the air down on their knees. It is a bit Heavy Metal without having that needlessly huge intensity. Punchy and epic, it closes the second single from the mighty The Last Dinner Party!

I want to wrap up with something that has unfortunately been circulating and dogging a great group since they came through. There is that sexism and misogyny aimed at them that is something that an all-male band would not have to deal with. Although it seems like a rather sombre or negative element to finish on, it is important to show how defiantly The Last Dinner Party have fought back against ridiculous and offensive remarks. Sinner proves that they are very much the real deal and should be beyond doubt and criticism. This final interview, we learn how the group felt about accusations that they were an industry plant. The fact that they had to face sexism and doubts about their credentials:

“I wonder whether the negativity they faced after starting out would be experienced by an all-male band in a similar situation. “No”, they reply in unison.

“There are plenty of bands on the same label as us who are all men, or mostly men, and they don’t get any of this,” Davies shrugs. “They don’t get the ‘industry plant’ or ‘they dress too well’, Morris adds.

The band say they “expected” criticism after seeing what happened to Wet Leg, another female-fronted band who, despite huge success here and in the US, received similar accusations of inauthenticity.

“It’s a strange dichotomy,” says Davies. “You see everyone saying there needs to be more women on festival line-ups, there needs to be more successful female acts, and at the same time, a female band like Wet Leg does really well, cleans up at the Grammys, cleans up at the BRITS and the response has been, ‘oh but not like that.’” Morris puts it bluntly: “You just can’t win.”

It’s clearly had an impact on them, but they’ve “supported each other” and have largely “switched off” from it all, focusing on working in the studio where they’ve completed two albums worth of material. Humour has also helped. Davies, who manages their Twitter account, posted what Morris describes as “the line of the century” when people said they weren’t writing their own songs. “Our boyfriends wrote all the parts we’re just there to look pretty!” the tweet read.

“It’s because you’re just too dainty to play the guitar!”, Roberts mocks. “I can’t hold the microphone because of my tiny wrist!” Morris laughs. “My nails are too long!”, Maylan deadpans.

“Instantly in a band of women, people also want to know how the relationships work,” she adds. “Like, they want to know if it’s more emotional.” They’ve been asked about everything from “being bitchy” to what their “hormones are like.”

“We also always get ‘it’s so subversive that you play all the instruments,” Maylan says. Morris shrugs:“No one asks male bands ‘what’s it like being in a male band’. This is what we get as women.”

Still, says Morris, “if at the end of the day we can make young girls feel better about wanting to play an instrument, that’s a bonus… I just want people to imagine ‘rock band’ and it’s women, rather than it being like ‘oh how unusual is that’. I want to live to see the day where the fact we’re all women is not a crazy or unbelievable thing.”

“The playing field isn’t level,” Davies adds. “Which is still the problem.”

They have met allies in the industry, like Courtney Love who offered support and advice when they met at a festival. “After our show we were talking about Nothing Matters and about how we had to change the ‘f***’ in the chorus. She came up with some lyric suggestions written on an empty box of painkillers,” Morris laughs. “She passed them to me and was like ‘think about it,’” she says, mimicking Love’s low, husky tones. “I didn’t use them – sorry Courtney – but I now have this box framed”.

With another huge and impressive single out there, anyone who felt Nothing Matters was a fluke or rarity should be in doubt regarding The Last Dinner Party’s clout and strength! They are an amazing, supremely talented and very close-knit group of friends who are going to conquer the music world. Already being talked about as future legends, Sinner is a supreme slice from a group who are…