“Prelude to Ecstasy” – The Last Dinner Party

Album: Prelude to Ecstasy

Artist: The Last Dinner Party

Year: 2024

Genre: Art Pop, Indie Pop

Grade: C+

The Last Dinner Party, an all-female five-piece art pop outfit from Great Britain, are a readymade hit parade. Catchy melodies, dramatic vocals, baroque arrangements — their 2024 debut album, Prelude to Ecstasy, is filled with glamorous pomp and circumstance. And to prove that they’re deserving of industry hype, their songs are an amalgamation of alt-pop and art rock heroes current and past: shades of Radiohead, The Cure, Paramore, Arcade Fire, Julia Holter, St. Vincent, U.S. Girls, boygenius, David Bowie, Queen, Pulp, Lana Del Rey, The Ronettes, Sleater-Kinney, Beach House, Kate Bush, etcetera, etcetera.

So, yes, The Last Dinner Party is quite impressive — well-produced romantics turning their grief into a commodity, with towering theatrics from lead singer Abigail Morris and honest-to-God guitar solos from Emily Roberts.

On the other hand, The Last Dinner Party don’t have much originality: expensive-sounding art music that feigns emotion and deigns to pretension, with lyrics that are unimaginatively topical and instrumentation that is all window dressing.

Prelude to Ecstasy wants to be a fun document of feminine struggles in a man’s world, but the album quickly goes from tongue-in-cheek to indie chic — more concerned with style over substance. The extent of The Last Dinner Party’s artistic creativity is that they wear elegant and ornate dresses while performing, masquerading as rococo punk but coming off as boho junk.

Their music is too quaint, too safe and, ultimately, too boring: a band who desperately wants to be critical darlings but will have to settle with number one on the Official Albums Chart instead; an “indie pop” group who appropriates the former to arrive at the latter. For all their supposed ambition, Prelude to Ecstasy is a poor debut that makes the industry plant allegations sound more valid with each passing song.

NOTES & CHORDS

• Morris’ showy vocals only grate because the lyrics are lacking in substance, but she is the clear standout member of the group. When the poetry catches up with the performance, then The Last Dinner Party will be vastly improved.

• Also, I’d say they’re in desperate need of a drummer. Producer James Ford provides the majority of the drums on Prelude to Ecstasy, and touring member Rebekah Rayner picks up the sticks when he’s not around, but the band’s musical enthusiasm is let down by the listless beats. For how much The Last Dinner Party loves to pirouette and do the fandango during their live shows, their songs have a noticeable lack of rhythm.

• The slightly out-of-tune guitars during the chorus of “On Your Side” reminds me of Alex Scally’s playing in Beach House, while the ambient electronic coda seems ripped straight from Radiohead’s A Moon Shaped Pool. But to name-check all the influences I referenced in the opening paragraph would take up too much space on this article. Trust me, though: seek and you shall find.

• The defiant chorus of their big hit “Nothing Matters” — “And you can hold me like he held her/And I will fuck you like nothing matters” — is try-hard rather than triumphant. Perhaps I’m assuming too much, but it often sounds like The Last Dinner Party thinks that they’re the first to do anything: e.g., play with an orchestra, sing about love, swear in an indie song, etc.

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