In an era when new bands struggle to break into the mainstream, the Last Dinner Party’s unusually swift rise (they were supporting the Rolling Stones a mere eight months after their first gig, and won the Rising Star Brit award just two years later) meant they spent much of the press cycle for their Mercury-nominated, chart-topping 2024 debut rubbishing suggestions they’d been manufactured by the music industry. As its follow-up arrives, the London five-piece still seem defensive. “While it may seem to an outsider that we have moved quickly on to a second album,” they write in a self-penned press release, “this timing felt like a natural progression to us.”
From the Pyre certainly doesn’t sound opportunistically rushed out. Quite the opposite, in fact: this is a dizzyingly dense collection of long, intricate tracks that layer biblical imagery, baroque detailing and cacophonous 00s indie energy. From Kate Bush cosplay (Second Best) to slightly tortured metaphors (if This Is the Killer Speaking’s narrator has been ghosted, does that make her a murderer?), often all this sonic and lyrical extravagance seems to come at the expense of basic melodic pleasure. It’s only when the band restrain their instincts for maximalism and melodrama – as on the beautiful (and still stompingly anthemic) I Hold Your Anger, a brooding exploration of maternal instinct – that the Last Dinner Party’s erudite, elaborate pop is able to really sing.
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