The Last Dinner Party – 'Prelude To Ecstasy' Album Review

Tracklist:

1. Prelude To Ecstasy

2. Burn Alive

3. Caesar On A TV Screen

4. The Feminine Urge

5. On Your Side

6. Beautiful Boy

7. Gjuha

8. Sinner

9. My Lady Of Mercy

10. Portrait Of A Dead Girl

11. Nothing Matters

12. Mirror

The Last Dinner Party are currently the subject of a fair degree of hype and attention, they are after all the BBC’s tip to be the sound of 2024! They’ve been on Graham Norton, They have just released their debut album, 'Prelude to Ecstasy' and I said I would review it, I’ve been genuinely surprised by it. Often the sound of choices don’t live up to the expectation, this band are an exception.

The best way to describe this album is that it’s a combination of Kate Bush, Breaking Glass era Hazel O’Connor, Florence and the Machine, Aerosmith, The Cure, ABBA, Blur and the Beatles. Is there ambition, yes, is there talent, yes, is there a touch of madness, yes, are there harmonies, yes. So what does it all add up to, I’m honestly not really sure, I just know that I love it.

What I think is the genius of this album is it keep subverting your expectations of it, just when you think you’ve worked out where it going to it goes somewhere completely different. Is it perfect? Not quite but it’s not far off it, the occasional lyric doesn’t work but there is some truly exceptional writing going on.

The band are clearly a tight unit, sparking off each other and creating a whole which is somehow greater than the sum of its parts.

Poignancy and pathos do surface a lot throughout this album, laugh a minute it is not but there is a lushness to it which makes me want to keep listening.

When they do cut loose, such as on the one track, 'Sinner', they really do seem to have cracked mixing Indie and ABBA, not something you thought was missing from your life and you’d be right to think that but actually you’d also be very, very wrong, this is genius on an alarmingly good level.

'Burn Alive' is one of those tracks I suspect a number of indie bands have been trying and failing to write for a number of years now. The reality is though I didn’t hear a weak song on this album, and I listened really hard as I surprised myself with just how much I enjoyed it!

I could review it song by song but you need to listen yourself right now, yes right now, and don’t stop until you’ve properly listened, this is not disposable, pop gum music, this is proper sit down, switch on your stereo and let it wash over you music, stop reading, start listening!