Written by Joey Grindrod
For those who haven’t been lucky enough to see The Last Dinner Party perform live, it may seem as if their meteoric rise has erupted out of nowhere. Their explosion into the mainstream has been driven by luck, nepotism, or industry connections, depending on which social media troll you ask. In reality, though, it’s The Last Dinner Party’s incredible performance ability and their unique sense of identity that has facilitated their success and had major labels crawling over themselves to sign them.
It’s been a pretty huge twelve months for The Last Dinner Party. Highlights include playing on Glastonbury’s Woodsies stage, supporting Lana Del Rey in Hyde Park, and embarking on their first nationwide headline tour. For the band’s lead guitarist (and resident flautist/ mandolin player) Emily Roberts, however, the standout memory from the past year is much more personal.
“One of the highlights recently was just see that people have done covers on TikTok of the Nothing Matters solo, which is incredible. I just can’t believe people are taking the time out of their day to learn something that I’ve written. Just to see that people like it and want to play it. That’s crazy to me.”
“It’s such a nice feeling inspiring those people to do that. It’s so lovely.”
The past year has seen the band release recorded music for the first time, too: “ [The response to the singles] has really surprised me. Just the numbers of people listening and streaming it has just been unbelievable and the response to them has been really great”.
It’s been rather a long wait for Last Dinner Party fans to get their hands on some recorded music; the band seem to have made a conscious decision to focus on honing the live experience rather than releasing an abundance of half-polished singles.
“I think that approach just makes a lot of sense for us as people. Abbie [Abigail Morris, lead singer] is just a born performer, that’s what she loves doing and that’s what she’s really good at. Aurora [Nischevi, keyboard player] and I were both professional musicians before we did the band, so we’ve done a lot of performing before and it’s kind of where we feel we most comfortable and where we feel like we can thrive. It just kind of made sense for us to do it like that. It’s quite a nostalgic way to do it I suppose because not a lot of people come through that way. I guess it’s more all about TikTok and that kind of thing. For us it felt like quite a nice, unusual way to do it just by word of mouth.”
The approach the band have taken – to worry about live performance first and releasing music second – stands out compared a lot of up-and-coming bands, who often choose to beat fans over the head with recorded music rather than perfecting their live shows. And the long wait for recorded music makes the pay off all the sweeter; fans of the Last Dinner Party will be happy to find out that that pay off is not far away.
“We’ll be doing a few more singles before the album and then the album is coming out early next year.”
“We’ve been playing the songs live for a really long time. We’d been playing them for about two years before we went in to record the album, so they’re all quite well rehearsed. The album has quite a live feel to it because we’ve been playing it live for quite a long time, which is a really nice energy for it to have.”
With plenty of music to be released and lots of exciting live shows to come, the winter of 2023 looks set to be just as busy as the summer for the Last Dinner Party. The band are undertaking another set of UK dates in October, including a trip to God’s own county for Live at Leeds festival. From there the band will go straight onto their first tour of the US, followed by a host of dates across Europe with Hozier.
“I’m really excited for the US because I’ve never been before”, Emily told me, “to go to New York and LA is going to be just amazing. It’s really nice that I get to do this sort of thing now as part of my job”.
The Last Dinner Party’s upcoming UK dates are subject to a ‘dress code’ of the band’s own creation. From Greek myths and legends to folklore and fairy tales, the band are encouraging fans to dress up for their shows and to share in the expression of fashion that is so central to the band’s own identity.
“For us, [fashion] is just like another form of art that you can explore, and it would be a shame not to do that in my opinion because it’s how you express yourself as well as the music and it all comes together. And it’s also really fun to wear the kind of clothes that we wear, wearing the long dresses I feel like a princess! I feel it’s just a nice way to express yourself really.”
“Usually Abbie sets the themes, but we all definitely support them! I think they’re going to be cool, we’ve got Grimm’s fairy tales, Greek mythology, stuff like that. I’m going to have to buy some new clothes!”
Fashion is a key part of the Last Dinner Party’s image and their uniquely grandiose, classical identity. This image the band have crafted for themselves, one of elaborate and dramatic musical theatre-esque performances, has been central to the band since its creation.
“From the beginning it’s been that kind of world. It has definitely developed along the way but even when Georgia [Davies, bass player] and Abbie first had conversations about the band, they wanted it to look like this kind of decadent dinner party where people are dressed really lavishly. So yeah, I think it came from those initial ideas and then we just kind of grew and expanded on that.”
“Dinner Party definitely has the drama”, Roberts tells me when asked if her background in musical theatre, having worked on Six on the West End before joining the band, has influenced her work with the Last Dinner Party. “It’s not really that different in a way. In both worlds you perform every night, and you have to make a routine of it, and there’s the dressing up. There are a lot of similarities between the drama of musical theatre and the drama here.”
“The way musicals are written, especially six, the music is really well written and that almost inspired me directly with some of the guitar lines and stuff for Dinner Party because it’s all very melodic and concise, it does just what it needs to do. And it’s also just lots of fun!”.
It’s just lots of fun. The Last Dinner Party feel like a young band who are very much enjoying themselves and their relatively quick come up. A band not afraid to express themselves exactly how they want to and to release some cracking music in the meantime. If you ever get the chance to see the Last Dinner Party perform live, go. You won’t be disappointed.
Jarred Up 
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