Titled From The Pyre, the second album of The Last Dinner Party plunges us once again into the whimsical world of the British quintet. Their theatrical tracks and explicit lyrics have already won over artists, such as Nick Cave or the Rolling Stones…
By Alexis Thibault.
The Last Dinner Party is back with a new album, From The Pyre
If the record Prelude to Ecstasy (2024) had catapulted The Last Dinner Party to the status of a baroque pop meteor in the British music scene, From The Pyre (2025) spells out their intentions more clearly. Released on October 17th, this second opus trims the fat and revels in its own excesses. Pop flirts with country, embraces unabashed kitsch, and even dips into a near-punk sludge metal. The outcome is an album as dazzling as stained glass, suspended between the breath of triumphant rock and the decadence of a Versailles court.
But here, the grandiloquence is reined in. Less excess, more poise, without forgetting the band’s taste for drama. Ever elegant and slightly wild, the five amazons still orchestrate their own bacchanal – stylish, outrageous, yet impeccably composed. Finalists for the 2024 Mercury Prize, alongside Charli xcx and Corinne Bailey Rae, and already winners of the Brit Award for Best New Artist, they prove it is possible to charm a jury without losing the fever.
How The Dinner Party became… The Last Dinner Party
Abigail Morris, Georgia Davies, Lizzie Mayland, Aurora Nishevci and Emily Roberts met at university. Some have a classical music background, others are self-taught. They spent a long time hanging around Brixton, London’s bustling neighbourhood, before forming The Dinner Party. A name that evokes both Marco Ferreri’s La Grande Bouffe (1973) and the scandalous banquet in ancient Rome.
There was just one problem… By July 2020, American saxophonist Kamasi Washington had already formed The Dinner Party, a “supergroup” that includes pianist Robert Glasper and composers 9th Wonder and Terrace Martin – one of the architects behind Kendrick Lamar’s masterpiece To Pimp A Butterfly. The Dinner Party had to become The Last Dinner Party.
About eight months ago, the quintet burst onto the scene with the track Nothing Matters. The tone was set. The Last Dinner Party was poised to become one of the most important bands of the next decade. Yet, they had originally chosen the song Burn Alive as their business card. But Nothing Matters turned out to be “a really powerful track with an ecstatic and maximalist approach to music.”
A band that has already won over the greatest artists
The press has no shortage of superlatives when it comes to The Last Dinner Party. The band is said to be making waves across the English Channel, where it won the BBC Sound of 2024, an award given each year by music critics and bog names in the industry to celebrate the most promising artists.
The Last Dinner Party outshone contenders like Olivia Dean, Peggy Gou, and Tyla. They are following in the footsteps of PinkPantheress, Pa Salieu, Celeste, or, going a bit further back, 50 Cent (2003), Keane (2004), Corinne Bailey Rae (2006), and Adele (2008).
These girls are talented, exceptionally talented. They know exactly where they’re going and cite Ken Russell‘s and Gregg Araki‘s films among their inspirations. Moreover, they’re surrounded by the right people, such as one of Metallica’s managers. As for the production of their first album, they could count on James Ellis Ford, a close collaborator of Gorillaz and Arctic Monkeys. One thing led to another and these young women, nostalgic for an era they never lived through, found themselves opening for Nick Cave, Florence + The Machine, and then the Rolling Stones…
That was all it took for an unlikely controversy to swell on social media. The band was accused of being a “nepo-baby” ensemble created by a label. Some were only just discovering how the modern music industry works. Others were simply talking nonsense online. Well, the controversy didn’t go far.
From The Pyre (2025) by The Last Dinner Party, available now.
‘ The preceding article may include information circulated by third parties ’
‘ Some details of this article were extracted from the following source numero.com ’
