Last Dinner Party

The Last Dinner Party are a British indie-pop band formed by Abigail Morris (vocals), Lizzie Mayland (backing vocals, guitar, flute), Emily Roberts (lead guitar, mandolin, flute, backing vocals), Georgia Davies (bass, backing vocals), Aurora Nishevci (keyboards, organ, piano, synthesizer, backing vocals), joined by Rebekah Rayner (drums, percussion, live performances only). Morris, Davies and Mayland started performing together in 2020, before meeting the rest of the band's members in 2021 through mutual friends. They then began performing together under the name The Dinner Party, landing a support slot the following year for a Rolling Stones concert at Hyde Park.

In 2023 they signed a record deal with Island Records, and in April 2023 released their debut single “Nothing Matters”, produced by James Ford, which reached number 22 on the UK charts. The following February they released their debut album “Prelude to Ectasy”.

“From The Pyre”, their second record, released in October 2025, arrives on the back of numerous accolades, starting with two consecutive Brit Awards — Rising Star in 2024 and Best New Artist in 2025 — and a nomination for the Mercury Prize. Compared to the debut, “From The Pyre” traces a rather different arc: the baroque-pop that defined The Last Dinner Party's early songs becomes more elaborate, more structured (just listen to the shifts in “This Is The Killer Speaking”), and even less “easy”, evolving towards a form of orchestral glam, alternating dramatic passages with vigorous indie-rock accents. Strings and pianos sit alongside guitar solos and vocal harmonies that betray a certain reverence for “Bohemian Rhapsody” (listen closely to the prologue of “Second Best”, but also to the vocal interplay in the first part of “Woman Is A Tree”). In this process of compositional growth, a practically flawless track like “Rifle” shows a firm refusal to resort to cheap shortcuts in the pursuit of wider success.

The Seventies loom large over the English quintet's songwriting — just follow the twists of “Count The Ways” — but the stylistic references are manifold, and after an opening stretch geared towards a personal reinterpretation of Queen and T-Rex, the record's closing stretch takes on a more subdued, “darker” gait, especially on “Sail Away” (where the piano takes centre stage), followed by “The Scythe”, in which Abigail Morris reflects on mortality, singing about her father's death with great serenity. The melodrama eases off in the closing track, the more indie-leaning “Inferno”, yet another show of strength from a band that, with “From The Pyre”, displays a cohesion and solidity few would have expected at this stage. (Claudio Lancia)