I have lost hope in contemporary pop music. As someone who used to keep his finger on the pulse of new releases, and who went to gigs as often as I could, the absence of innovation has been one of the great disappointments of the past couple of decades. There really isn’t anything much out there, bar, of course, the sainted Taylor Swift. But ever since David Bowie’s death eight years ago (eight years…), the music industry seems to have been in a desperate downward spiral, where flair, originality and chutzpah are sorely missed. Surely it’s time that a new act could supply such things, complete with flute solos, songs sung in Albanian and an orchestral overture?
No, I am not making it up. The Last Dinner Party, a group of young British women who describe their influences as being equal parts Bowie, Kate Bush, Sparks and whatever art rock their parents were listening to, burst onto the music scene last year with their debut single, “Nothing Matters,” one of the ballsiest and catchiest calling cards in living memory. Vaguely reminiscent of ABBA to begin with, as impeccably voiced singer Abigail Morris begins a tale of sexual obsession, it then explodes into the chorus: “And I will hold you / Like nothing matters / And I will fuck you / Like nothing matters.” It managed that tricky combination of being artistically great while giving festival crowds something to sing along to at the tops of their voices — which will come in extremely handy when they make their debut at Coachella in April, after a US tour that begins in Austin in March.
Yet there have been countless acts that announced themselves with a stunning lead single, faltered thereafter and have never been heard of again. What’s different about the Last Dinner Party is that Morris and her bandmates (including lead guitarist Emily Roberts, who displays rare facility at showing off the kind of sky-scraping Eighties riffs that most acts would never ever dare touching these days) is that they have clearly given their debut album considerable thought, establishing it in the great tradition of everything from Suede’s Dog Man Star to Pulp’s This Is Hardcore. But don’t worry, this is miles more fun.
Calling it Prelude to Ecstasy is just the sort of dramatic and grandiose touch that sums up their worldview, and the allusions to everything from Romantic literature to Gothic horror (mirrored in their live shows, in which audiences are asked to dress up in themed fancy dress: most enthusiastically comply) are likely to be dismissed by some as pretentious and self-absorbed. The billowing string arrangements on the likes of “Portrait of a Dead Girl” and album closer “Mirror” are entirely out of kilter with anything going on in contemporary music. That is, for the avoidance of doubt, a good thing. There’s even a nod to the Roman Empire meme, in the suitably witty “Caesar on a TV Screen.” Clearly, the Last Dinner Party are nobody’s fools.
The album is produced by Arctic Monkeys’ producer James Ford, who has also worked with Florence and the Machine — a clear and obvious touchstone — and it has some passing similarities to the Monkeys’ 2022 album The Car, including a shared and obvious love of Bowie. Yet while The Car often felt artificial and stylized, even down to Alex Turner’s bizarre decision to adopt a Bryan Ferry-esque croon, Prelude to Ecstasy fizzes with wit, invention and its own kind of integrity. There has been grumbling that the Last Dinner Party are a bunch of nepo babies, given their privileged upbringings, slightly gauche stage personae and the fact that the album is being put out by Island Records, hardly the home of indie nobodies. They deny it, but it says a lot about the small-mindedness of the industry that it isn’t considered possible for an act to arrive fully formed any longer.
Whatever the circumstances under which the band came together, it barely matters. I first saw them last year, in the back room of a bar in Oxford. There could only have been a couple of hundred people there, but there was already an excited buzz, which was then justified tenfold by the swooningly theatrical show that they delivered. This wholly distinctive album justifies the hype, and then some. I was trying to think of the last time that I was so impressed by a debut, and realized, with a mixture of horror and amusement, that it was the Arcade Fire’s Funeral, twenty years ago. Prelude to Ecstasy is more than worthy of comparison with them, and with all the other artists that they are so clearly, affectionately indebted to, and makes for a thrillingly unfettered experience to listen to. Bowie, you suspect, would have loved them, and there can be no higher praise.
