The Last Dinner Party have always known who they are.
For the last few years, the band of five have been dressing up in lace-trimmed corsets and flowing gowns to put on performances full of grandeur and maximalism in spaces across London.
“We come from a really colourful, amazing music scene in London in its independent venues,” bassist Georgia Davies from The Last Dinner Party tells me. Born and raised in Australia, she moved to the UK for university where she fell in with the rest of the band.
Keep up with the latest music news, features, festivals, interviews and reviews here.
From performing at dim-lit local venues to world-renowned festivals like Glastonbury and Coachella, The Last Dinner Party have officially broken away from London’s underground scene and are set to play in Australia for the very first time.
Their debut record Prelude To Ecstasy is emotionally dynamic, spanning from the explosive chorus of Nothing Matters to the tragic lyrics in On Your Side. It’s an elegantly smooth testament to a band who knows exactly who they are.
Brought together during the COVID-19 lockdowns, Abigail, Georgia, Emily, Aurora and Lizzie spent a lot of time practising and writing before they started performing under the name The Dinner Party in 2021. Two years later and gaining traction as a band, they added the word ‘Last’ to steer clear of any confusion with another group called Dinner Party.
“We started playing gigs and we quickly realised we didn’t want to record anything until it was good and ready,” explains Georgia.
“I think that there’s a lot of unnecessary pressure on young bands to have a really slick recording and to already be on Spotify, and to already be on a viral TikTok sound and to be a bedroom producer.
“I think what we ultimately wanted to do was go back to the days of just hearing about a band through a friend or on a gig poster and wanting to go see them based on nothing you could find online – just word of mouth and that kind of feral hype culture of it.”
As a band, they’ve spent years honing in on the craft of playing live which is evident in the orchestral flourishes of their music and the visual opulence of their performances. Watching them now, it’s hard to believe there were only around 15 people who attended their first-ever gig at The George Tavern, but that didn’t stop them from putting on a classic Last Dinner Party show.
“We played that set like it was heading Glastonbury,” Georgia laughs. “I woke up that morning and have never been more nervous in my life – I’ve never felt like that before and we truly put everything into it.”
They dressed up, coordinated the whole set and played some of the songs that now make up their debut album Prelude To Ecstasy.
From the arpeggiated synth riffs in Burn Alive to the Albanian melody in Gjuha with a handful of guitar solos sprinkled throughout, the sounds that make up the record are hard to encapsulate in just a few words. Many have described the band as baroque-infused pop meets grungy art-rock, however, the members’ different backgrounds and tastes make for some genre-bending fun.
Together as a group, they share many of the same role models when it comes to the artists and music they love. “People who are unapologetically creative” is the way Georgia describes the common thread between influential artists such as Bowie, Queen, Kate Bush, Florence and the Machine and FKA Twigs.
“We were very inspired by people who create their own kind of sonic but also aesthetic world,” says Georgia.
In their accompanying music videos, the lyrics from Nothing Matters and My Lady Of Mercy are only further intensified by the visual worlds created by the band. In Ceasar On A TV Screen, they reenact the tragedy of Julius Caesar, with each member parading their male character’s fragile masculinity disguised as an animated rage.
The harmonious intro and outro on the record link together everything in between from the synth breakdowns to the heavy bass and haunting melodies. The album draws from motifs of the past, borrowing from time periods spanning from medieval to 18th century Gothic.
“If I had to design a perfect place to listen to it, it would definitely be on vinyl in an old library with those ladders that connect all the bookshelves that you have to climb up and maybe a little glass of whiskey or red wine and you’d just sit there and listen,” she laughs before she adds another important element, “as a storm rages outside.”
An album with a world as rich and theatrical as the one in Prelude To Ecstasy is ideal to listen to whenever you want to escape your surroundings for exactly 41 minutes and 8 seconds. With lyrics that border on the darker side and an energy reflecting the inner turmoil of being a woman, The Last Dinner Party will harmonise you into another world.
“I think people probably don’t know how much of it we did on our own. All of the orchestration Aurora literally wrote and [she] composed all of the sheet music on her laptop,” explains Georgia.
“People probably don’t even know how hands-on it was with the production and creation of the record. We only used outside help to record it. Every single note that you hear was composed, written and arranged by us – it’s very much our thing.”
For a female and non-binary led band to arrive as complete as The Last Dinner Party have on this record, it’s no surprise they were met with accusations of being ‘industry plants’. However, it’s clear the quintet are proud of their origins and will continue to deliver polished orchestral strings, bold vocal performances and electric guitar riffs which are entirely their own creation.
The album’s success has brought them to now selling out venues around the world, including in Australia, where they’ll be kicking off with a slot at Adelaide’s Spin Off Festival before hitting the east coast for a short-but-sweet tour. For Georgia, it’ll be the first time playing on home soil.
“All of us, not just me, are probably gonna have a lot of barrel, pent-up energy which will be fun, but I think fans can expect me to be pretty emotional,” says Georgia. “None of us can quite believe that we have fans anywhere, let alone on the other side of the world in Australia.”
Grab tickets to see The Last Dinner Party at Festival Hall on July 22 here.
