The Last Dinner Party, a baroque pop quintet from London, are the rare rock band that sprung out of the 2020s. It’s impressive that they’ve garnered as much attention as they have with their first album, Prelude to Ecstasy, which debuted on February 2nd at #1 on the UK Albums Chart. It’s an impassioned record that sounds good and features moving melodies and lyrics, but its structure often feels purposelessly aimless. Its originality and edge are difficult to ignore, but its musical disorganization makes it hard to remember on first listen.
Their lyrics tend towards impressionism, with songs like “The Feminine Urge” and “Beautiful Boy” painting poetic pictures more than telling concrete stories. They often focus on recurring themes of womanhood, lust, relationships, and passion, which match their energetic performances and give the album its strongest sense of identity. It helps that even during the least vivid lyrics, lead singer Abigail Morris never sounds bored, making use of her wide range to sing each word like she means it.
The biggest problem with Prelude to Ecstasy is in its songs’ structure. Too many are half-baked or stitched together from mismatched fragments. Multiple tracks feature chorus-verse tempo changes, among them “Caesar on a TV Screen.” “My Lady Of Mercy” features modest, quick verses peppered with hand-claps, but they’re placed among abrasive fuzz-guitar choruses too different to feel complementary. The band’s experimentation beyond conventional pop song structure is too frequent to be shocking, and it’s unrewarding – the album’s most straightforward songs are its best.
Indeed, where Prelude to Ecstasy succeeds musically, it’s in producing exciting moments on conhesive songs. Following “Prelude to Ecstasy,” an orchestral overture, standout “Burn Alive” features ominous calls-and-responses between guitarists Lizzie Maryland and Emily Roberts and bassist Georgia Davies. Then it blooms into a chorus backed by Aurora Nishevci’s soft, high-pitched synths, an understated but invaluable addition to the whole album. “Sinner” is proud and uptempo, with a manic rhythm that makes it the album’s most fun song. The chorus of lead single “Nothing Matters” is the record’s biggest earworm.
Overall, Prelude to Ecstasy is a debut album that doesn’t live up to expectations, but it introduces The Last Dinner Party as a band with a strong voice, edgier than Florence + The Machine and more earnest than Marina. Prelude to Ecstasy may be undercooked and hindered by its messier parts, but it has the ingredients to become somebody’s favorite record.
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