If you like a bit of theatricality in your music, you need to get down and listening to The Last Dinner Party. They're a cool new rock band from London, and they sprang forth with a vision in mind. Many bands wander around nomadically from sound to sound as they try and discover who they are musically, not The Last Dinner Party. They formed with a purpose.
“I think the first conversation I had about the band was at The Shack after watching a band play and Abigail [Morris, singer] said: ‘we’re going to start a band,’” [says] guitarist Lizzie Maylan. “We were watching some post-punk lads up on stage and we were like: ‘This is shit! We need to do something about this. We can and will change the music industry.”
They discussed the band's look and sound at length, even before their first rehearsals together.
Their visual identity is as important to them as the music. On stage, they wear gothy, medievalish gowns and corsets (think Midsommar crossed with Wuthering Heights-era Kate Bush). “We thought a lot about it, big time,” says [bassist Georgia] Davies. [...F]rom the very beginning, before we even had a rehearsal, we knew we were going to think about this so carefully.”
Their well thought-out, fully-baked plans hit a small roadbump that's infuriatingly common on the internet with regards to the music industry these days: small-minded claims of being 'industry plants'. Which is fucking awful, because firstly, internet-brain has ruined our ability to believe anything at all. When discussions about nepotism were happening, they were meant to be about children of people in the entertainment industry getting preferential treatment by their parents' peers and cutting ahead in line, not about anybody in the entertainment industry who gets any success at all being 'suspicious'. Shut up. Shut. Up. And use your brain for a moment!
Secondly, it's always women. It's always women in successful bands that get hit with claims of unfair advantages. Always unfounded or unfair. The phrases people used to use for similar male bands were "burst fully-formed onto the scene", "hit the ground running" and "phenomenal talent". If you can marvel at ‘Brazil’ being written when Declan McKenna was 15 then you can believe that The Last Dinner Party's first single was brilliant with no outside help. You can believe that ‘Chaise Longue’ was a genuine hit, and Wet Leg's debut album sold as fantastically as it did because people really connected with the freedom and sense of humour in those songs.
All these bands have worked incredibly hard, and just as hard as their male peers. If you're going to complain that it's "unfair" or "selling out" for a band to gain fans off the back of supporting Louis Tomlinson on tour, then you should simply get off the internet and get out of all of our faces because you're a fool, an idiot, and you fundamentally do not understand how the music industry works.
You're angry that someone gained fans because they played an hour before a pop star? You think that's unfair? What exactly do you picture when you think of a musician, a thicko? Someone who says no to genuine and exciting musical opportunities in their music career? I don't think you're a musician if the ability to play a stadium doesn't pique your curiosity, you're just a miserable git that's waiting for self-inflicted misery to finally spark some musical inspiration in you. Get the fuck out. Pathetic.
The Last Dinner Party also earned their stripes. They were in bands around the London scene, original and cover bands. When people compare their music to Kate Bush, Queen, ABBA, David Bowie, it's because they're very familiar with their work. Lead guitarist Emily Roberts played Brian May's parts in a Queen cover band before The Last Dinner Party took off. Criticism from the never-really-tried row came again when live recordings of their shows uploaded to YouTube piqued interest from record labels and they were offered a deal by Island Records, who they ended up signing to.
“We could have signed to an indie or a major,” [keyboardist Aurora] Nishevci says, “but we wanted money,” Morris interjects. Before the deal with Island Records, they balanced their studies alongside odd jobs and gigging to make ends meet.
Of course, the hate continued, with some critics accusing them of ‘selling out’ by signing to a major label. “We weren’t going to turn down an incredible opportunity like this,” Morris says. “I think it’s a really dangerous mentality, where to make art, you must be struggling, all the time,” adds Davies. “We want to encourage people to be able to do art and make a living from it, to be comfortable and able to do it with longevity and sustainability. If we’re only celebrating or accepting art where it’s been a real struggle, it’s a terrible message.”
They also point out how few artists now have a choice, at a time when so many earn so little from the industry, and arts cuts abound. “If we didn’t have management or any help, there’s no way we could afford to play festivals,” Davies says. “It cuts out so many great bands from these opportunities because of how little [they earn]. I think there should be so much more help… but the government doesn’t fund anything, so they’re not going to fund the arts.”
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“There are plenty of bands on the same label as us who are all men, or mostly men, and they don’t get any of this,” Davies shrugs. “They don’t get the ‘industry plant’ or ‘they dress too well’, Morris adds.
It must get tiring. But the highs outweigh the lows! The Last Dinner Party were a last-minute addition to the Saturday morning lineup at Glastonbury festival (untelevised so I have no idea how it went, I'd have loved to see it!), and attendees said they loved their set. They also recently did a cool session at Maida Vale for BBC Radio 6 Music that includes a splendid version of their first single, the gothic, almost-Victorian, theatrical Nothing Matters.
It's been impressive enough that they opened for the Rolling Stones at Hyde Park and have now been on tour opening for Florence + The Machine.
There's a lot more good to focus on than the disappointing attitudes of some people towards women in music, such as the fact that they're excited to get an album out soon! They are a band that largely came up through word-of-mouth praise from fans who dragged their friends along to their live shows: they had no real social media presence till right before this single was announced, no recorded music before Nothing Matters in April, a second song Sinner that came out this month. But through live performance clips uploaded by fans to Youtube, you can see they've got enough music to play a 40-minute headline set. Keep an eye and an ear out, an album will be here soon, and it's going to be one of the biggest indie/rock albums of this year.
