Words by India Farnham | Image above: Laura Marie Cieplik
It was a hot, sticky Saturday afternoon at Glastonbury Festival when my friends and I rocked up to The Other Stage to see the London-based all female and non-binary band The Last Dinner Party in 2024. Morale wasn’t particularly high. We were hungover, already sun-burnt, and surviving on a diet of Soreen snacks and luke-warm beer from a plastic water bottle. We certainly didn’t expect the performance, awash with baroque-pop bravado and Kate Bush- esque operatic vocals, to be one of the sun-soaked highlights of the whole weekend.
Since then, I have had a shower, and The Last Dinner Party have continued to enchant critics and audiences alike with their gutsy, pomp-rock tunes, silencing ‘style over substance’ allegations with their swiftly released and well-reviewed second album, 2025’s From the Pyre, and are now embarking on a semi-worldwide tour, which, recently (30 November), brought them to Bristol. I headed to the show (in my most dramatically-sleeved top) determined to give them a proper Bristol welcome.
Like all good rock bands, The Last Dinner Party are immediately recognisable in their fashion and this night was no different. Think Victoriana- corsets, ribbons and frills, but put together in a slightly mismatched, collage-like way. There might still be some refining to do here, but frontman Abigail Morris’ bell sleeve body suit was absolutely a highlight, giving her, with her jet-black bob, the appearance of an alt-rockstar Snow White.
The real success of the From The Pyre tour is the band’s ability to recreate and elevate the lightning-in-a-bottle feeling of their original, underground shows. The key here is that the music is structurally and sonically very interesting, keeping the audience on their toes; melodies are soaring and often unpredictable, and many of the songs are animated by snatches of poetry, varying languages (Gjuha is sung in band member Aurora Nishevci’s mother tongue, Albanian), or refrains sung completely a cappella, like the opening of the haunting Second Best. This experimentation is, of course, testament to the talent of the band members as musicians, most notably guitarist/flutist Emily Roberts, a former BBC Young Jazz Musician finalist.
But, just as you think The Last Dinner Party have swirled up into the realm of abstraction, they’ll come right back with an electrifying guitar solo à la Queen or a sweeping, grandiose, campy chorus that’ll have you belting the lyrics, much like the one that made the world fall in love with them on 2023’s debut single Nothing Matters. And in moments like these, the spirit in the room is infectious. Indeed – I dare you to sing The Scythe’s ‘don’t cry, we’re bound together’ with a room full of likeminded people and not feel like everything might just be okay.
Now, I’m not particularly spiritual, but there’s surely a hint of ‘divine timing’ in the arrival of such a politically engaged act at The Prospect Building, a venue designed to celebrate culture in Bristol, just as the arts face serious funding cuts in our city. And I dare say The Last Dinner Party would agree; spirituality, it seems, is woven into the fabric of their universe, with many of their songs casually referencing worship or godliness as part of their semi-ironic, tragic shtick (‘I’m Jesus Christ/ I’m swinging in a gallery in France’ Morris sings with open arms on the first verse of Inferno). Other meaty topics are also up for examination in The Last Dinner Party songbook, including motherhood (The Feminine Urge), masculinity (Caesar on a TV Screen) and queerness/self-expression (Sinner) to name but a few.
As a frontman, Morris is buoyant and teasing, but becomes most relaxed when she’s interacting with her bandmates, who, it’s clear from their chemistry and anecdotes (there was one about how they came up with their band name in the pub, which I particularly enjoyed) genuinely really get on. This is music made by friends, for friends, and their gig, with its occasional hiccups, is like being let in to the magical, creative chaos of their rehearsals. It’s joyous, and I can’t imagine how important it’ll be for music-loving little girls, The Last Dinner Party members of tomorrow, to see women and queer people collaborating so powerfully on stage, every night. The future is female, and queer, and possibly wearing a corset. In the words of Morris, Amen, baby!
The Last Dinner Party performed at The Prospect Building on 30 November.
