Album Review: Prelude To Ecstasy by The Last Dinner Party

Here's the thing: I'm not hugely interested in details regarding the excellent management team who spotted the potential that was apparent when London-based band The Last Dinner Party (formerly The Dinner Party) began performing in venues such as The Moth Club and London's Windmill a few years ago. Nothing matters other than, are they any good at the actual music? Ultimately, it's the sonic connection with the listener that makes or breaks a band. While conversations about class and industry access are vital, charging in with accusations of privilege or nepotism without any evidence and then completely refusing to evaluate the music seems reductive and dismissive, and, let's be honest, it makes you look like a bit of a knob-head.

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I LIKE THE MUSIC, BUT There's really no good way to start any piece of writing about The Last Dinner Party: you either acknowledge the Discourse and engage with it, acknowledge the Discourse and state that you refuse to engage with it, or do not acknowledge the Discourse and leave a tangible Discourse-shaped hole of awkwardness to anyone reading. Yikes. Here goes nothing (read: something): I do not care about The Last Dinner Party being, not being, or being perceived as industry plants because, frankly, it does not matter.

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Tags: The Last Dinner Party, Reviews, Album Reviews.

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The first guitar band to win the BRITs' Rising Star award in its 16 years, The Last Dinner Party superficially seem an odd contender for mainstream sensations: their theatrical debut includes a song in Albanian plus a classical prelude and coda. Yet Prelude To Ecstasy inhabits its own world as magnificently as The Lexicon Of Love or Dog Man Star in marrying its grandiose aims with massive tunes. Georgia Davies' elastic bass is worthy of Alex James in Cesar On A TV Screen, while Sinner is a Slade-tier raucous banger.

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Extravagance, melodrama, and ambition – The Last Dinner Party deliver on the hype with their formidably polished debut album ‘Prelude To Ecstasy’. When they broke out with their quivering indie-pop mission statement ‘Nothing Matters’ , The Last Dinner Party were already performing with striking conviction, style, and substance for a band literally releasing their first song . Their commitment to the glamour, costume, and theatrics was way beyond what would be needed or expected from a band cutting their teeth, but as they prove on ‘Prelude To Ecstasy’, dressing up to the nines and giving it everything seems to be The Last Dinner Party's raison d'etre.

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