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The Last Dinner Party are feasting on love, death and killer riffs
The Last Dinner Party are feasting on love, death and killer riffs
If you're the sort of person to get lost in an album, The Last Dinner Party have a treat for you.
On their second record, From The Pyre, the last note of the last song segues perfectly into the opening bars of the first one. They're even in the same key (F major, musicology fans).
When you listen on a loop, it draws you ever deeper into its whirlpool of dreams and nightmares and sex and death.
That wasn't deliberate, actually, but that's really cool," says guitarist Emily Roberts, when it's pointed it out to her. "Maybe, subconsciously, that's why those songs bookend the album.
As the name suggests, From The Pyre is darker, grubbier, more gothically grandiose than their critically acclaimed debut, Prelude To Ecstasy.
"It felt like there were no limits for what we could do, whether it was a really long guitar solo, or something inspired by a Bulgarian folk choir," says Davies.
Confidence is the word we've thrown around as we've been writing," agrees singer Abigail Morris. "We'd improved as musicians and as writers, and we wanted to be challenged.
The London-based quintet have every right to be confident. The Last Dinner Party were signed to Island Records in 2022, based on an amateur video of their fourth ever gig.
They soon took over the airwaves with their first single, Nothing Matters: A sexually liberated rock anthem that was more immediate than a vodka shot on an empty stomach.
After winning the BBC's Sound of 2024, they topped the album charts, sold out three nights at London's Hammersmith Apollo and cemented their success by winning best newcomer at the Brit Awards.
Performing at the ceremony, organisers wanted Emily to descend from the rafters, playing Nothing Matters' guitar solo "like the fairy godmother who comes down in a bubble" in David Lynch's Wild At Heart.
"Unfortunately, we ran out of time," the guitarist laughs.
Time is not a commodity the band have enjoyed in abundance. Since 2023, they've played 214 gigs, shot a short film, and graced the front row of Paris Fashion Week. So when on earth did they write their second album?
"We had four months at the start of this year where we didn't really play any shows," says bassist Georgia Davies, "so we were recording then".
But when people are like, 'When did you write the album?' The answer is basically, over Christmas.
That doesn't paint the full picture, however, says Abigail.
Some of the songs on From The Pyre "have been in the dressing-up box, waiting to come out," since the band formed in 2021.
The Scythe, a sumptuously wounded ballad released as the album's second single, goes even further back.
"I wrote the chorus when I was 16 or 17," says Abigail.
I knew it was really good, but the rest of the song wasn't right, so I kept it in reserve until the right time.
Abigail originally wrote The Scythe about a teenage break-up. It was only when her sister heard it and commented on the lyrics that she realised it was really a rumination on death.
"My father passed away when I was a teenager," she says, "and that kind of loss takes a long time to get your head around - even when you're in therapy and you're talking about it".
She resisted the temptation to make the lyrics more explicitly autobiographical, reasoning that grief and heartache are intrinsically linked.
When you have a big heartbreak, in my experience, it's exactly the same bodily response as someone dying, which I think is really crazy. Your body doesn't know the difference. And that's really interesting, I think, to write about in a song.
Perhaps, I suggest, the link is especially strong for someone who's lost a parent at a young age. Every subsequent loss is refracted through that lens.
"Yeah, the body keeps score," she agrees.
I think if you experience a trauma in your childhood or teenhood, it takes a really long time to repair. You might feel fine and well-adjusted and able to go through life, but you don't respond to things in the same way as someone who hasn't been through those experiences. It's all stored up on a molecular level.
As The Scythe illustrates, From The Pyre is a deeply personal record – even though the band have a tendency to self-mythologise and dress their stories in florid, theatrical outfits.
It's a trait Abigail explores on the opening track, Agnus Dei, which depicts one of her exes as a heavenly apparition, descending from the clouds onto London Bridge.
"All I can give you is your name in lights for ever/ And ain't that so much better/ Than a ring on my finger?" she croons, suggesting that being immortalised in song is vastly preferable to the mundanity of (urgh!) commitment.
When you put someone in a song, when you make someone a muse, what does that do to them?" she asks. "Is it a gift or a curse to make someone live forever in a song?
"In a way, mythologising [the relationship] is a way of being in control of the situation, by turning them into something fictional.
And the more you perform it, the more removed from reality it gets. The details get blurry. You can't remember what was real or what was the fable.
So, is the singer this melodramatic in her real life relationships?
"Oh! Noo-ooo!" she replies, her laughter ripe with sarcasm, as her bandmates deliver a hasty "no comment".
But melodrama is what makes The Last Dinner Party so compelling.
Every song froths and foams with possibility – whether it's the razor sharp guitar riffs that suddenly appear in Second Best, or Abi's vicious put-downs ("Your kindness didn't last beyond a fry-up") in This Is The Killer Speaking.
Woman Is A Tree opens with discordant harmonies, inspired by cult horror show Yellowjackets; while broiling anti-war anthem Rifles ratchets its tempo ever-upwards.
Written by Georgia, the song was originally about the futility of war, but it gained fresh urgency after Israel launched its military action in Gaza – an issue on which the band have been passionately outspoken.
They've called Israel's campaign "inexcusable"; and pulled out of Portsmouth's Victorious Festival after another group was silenced for displaying a Palestinian flag on stage.
Reflecting on the decision, Georgia says the group couldn't countenance "singing Nothing Matters and dancing around in our outfits at a place where a flag is seen as an act of political violence".
I'm very proud that we [pulled out], because obviously it was financial loss and a massive let down to people, but it was obviously, absolutely the right thing to do.
Spending time with The Last Dinner Party, it's obvious that on this issue, as on everything else, they're perfectly aligned.
Unlike many bands, there's no imbalance of power, no overbearing personality hoovering up the oxygen. They're a gang, a force to be reckoned with.
Everyone contributes musically, with keyboard player Aurora Nischevi conducting all the orchestral arrangements, and Emily – who holds a first class jazz degree from the Guildhall School – hailed as an "indie guitar hero" for her "venomous solos" and "perfectly judged riffs".
I don't know about that," she blushes. "Can you send me some of those articles?
From The Pyre has already received a clutch of four and five star reviews, saying its 10 songs " add a sinister edge to their over-the-top theatrics" that leaves their "peers sounding listless [and] uninspired".
The songs constantly mutate, often stretching out over five minutes, in an implicit rejection of TikTok virality.
"Two minutes isn't long enough," protests Emily.
We're five people. We each want to put our own stamp on the song. We like contrast in our songs, and dramatic build-ups. We couldn't do that in two minutes. It wouldn't work.
And they promise there's more to come.
"We have a Google Drive with a folder that just says, 'Ideas'," says Abigail.
And it's full.
Source: BBC
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