Titus writes:
This blog is a first for me, in that I am featuring
an all girl band for the second week running, having spent hours and
hours researching. The Last Dinner Party are a British Indie Rock Band
formed in London in 2021. I say 2021 because the members actually met
in 2020 during Freshers’ week at King’s College, London, and decided
to form a band, having attended gigs together at The Windmill. They
apparently felt inspired by being a part of the scene around the venue,
and were at first called The Dinner Party. The name was “inspired by
the idea of a huge debauched dinner party where people came together to
celebrate with a hedonistic banquet”. Like in many instances, the
covid pandemic put the skids on any live performances, and to a certain
extent, rehearsing, so the band didn’t perform live until their first
gig at The George, London in November 2021. The group took a major
step forward by supporting the Rolling Stones at the Hyde Park gig in
July 2022.
The
band renamed themselves The Last Dinner Party when they signed to
Island Records, to avoid confusion with the jazz band Dinner Party, and
their debut and hugely successful single ‘Nothing Matters’ was released
in April 2023. That year the band played at Glastonbury and Latitude,
plus a live session for the BBC Radio 6 Music Show ‘New Music Fix
Friday’. They were popular in media circles and were arguably lucky
enough to appear on Jools Holland’s TV programme in the Autumn of
2023. They released their first (and so far only) studio album
‘Prelude to Ecstasy’ in February 2024, and they were not only nominated
for, but also won the coveted ‘Rising Star’ award at the Brits this
year. In October 2024 they released a compilation LP ‘Prelude to
Ecstasy: Acoustics and Covers’ which included IMO a superb cover of
the Sparks classic ‘This town ain’t big enough for both of us’ (more
about that later).
Their
style was described by ‘Rolling Stone’ magazine as “art-rock bombast’,
whatever that means. Lead vocalist Abi has been compared to the late
Freddie Mercury in that she seems onstage to be a natural extrovert
& show person. Just in case you were wondering that I had omitted
to list the current band members......well, I hadn’t forgotten. They
are Abigail Morris, lead vocals; Lizzie Mayland, vocals, guitar and
flute; Emily Roberts, lead guitar, mandolin, flute, vocals; Georgia
Davies, bass and vocals; Aurora Nishevci, keyboards and vocals. For
live touring performances they use Casper Miles on drums. The Last
Dinner Party have also toured, and (not a lot of people know this)
their first gig of their 2023 UK tour was at Blackpool Central
Library, as part of the ‘Get it loud in Libraries’ week. This tour was
followed by a U.S. one, and this year they have been touring Europe,
the U.K and Australia, supporting amongst others Florence and the
Machine.
I
mentioned ‘This town ain’t big enough for both of us’ earlier on. Of
the many blogs I’ve written over the last fourteen months or so, I’ve
picked a request track for Lex to play on his programme. Sometimes
it’s been close! On this occasion however, my decision was the closest
yet, and ‘This town’ just missed out. However, despite not being a
cover versions person, this rendition of the 1974 Sparks’ song is in my
opinion, quite superb and worth a listen or two. It can be found by
clicking here, if you’d like to do that. I have been
spoilt for choice by this extremely talented new band and my choice of
track for Lex to play on ‘WTF is this’ this week is a live version of
‘Sinner’ which can be found here.