“This is sacred ground,” Abigail Morris told the crowd at Hackney’s EartH last night. This was for a very specific reason. The gig was taking place just around the corner from small music venue the Shacklewell Arms, she explained: “the place we came up with the name The Last Dinner Party.”
Haven’t they come a long way since then. Despite being yet to release a debut album, The Last Dinner Party are selling out venues up and down the country – including at EartH, their biggest London headline yet.
The London-based band (comprised of Abigail Morris, Lizzie Mayland, Emily Roberts, Georgia Davies, and Aurora Nishevci) certainly have a lot going for them. They signed with the major label Island before they’d even released their first song, Nothing Matters. Their glam-rock aesthetic feels all rather Marie Antoinette – if the latter stuck some safety pins in her ear and decided to smash the patriarchy.
Their set certainly had fire aplenty. They began with Burn Alive: heavy drumbeats echoed through the venue, overlaid by lead singer Abigail Morris’s characteristically haunting vocals: dressed all in black, she channelled Kate Bush crossed with Florence and the Machine.
Hot on its heels came the plaintive Caesar on a TV Screen, then Feminine Urge – “this next one is about feminine rage,” Morris announced, before snarling the lyrics into the microphone with a vengeance. During the following bass-heavy On Your Side, she prowled the stage like a tiger, circling her band mates before dropping dramatically to the ground for the song’s end. There was even time for a brand new track – so new that it hadn’t been named yet.
But it wasn’t all head-thrashing: The Last Dinner Party handled their audience better than many seasoned pros. Beautiful Boy, midway through the set, was underpinned by a gorgeous, swaying melody, performed on a stage bathed in shifting blue light; after that, bandmate Aurora Nishevci stepped forward to perform the Albanian-inspired Gjuha, which, she explained, “is about me feeling shame [from] not knowing my mother tongue very well.” Starting off with a spare, plucked guitar melody, it rapidly built into a cacophony of gorgeous harmonies and wailing voices. In other words, Gothic as hell.
Never one to draw things out, The Last Dinner Party closed their tight one-hour set with a rapid-fire barrage that saw new single My Lady of Mercy followed by the muscular, aggressive Godzilla. To screams from the audience, they finished with the single where it all began: the anthemic Nothing Matters. It was a song for all the doomed lovers out there.
“It’s good to be home,” Morris declared towards the end of the night – and home welcomed them with open arms.
