It’s hard to think of the last time a band elected to open their debut album with an orchestral overture. But that’s how the Last Dinner Party’s debut begins: woodwind, brass and strings turned up to 11, further decorated with crashing cymbals and shimmering harp. It’s so grandiose, even the director of a 1950s Hollywood blockbuster would have suggested his soundtrack composer dial it down a bit. It’s also bold to the point of seeming faintly provocative, but then if you were in the Last Dinner Party, you’d probably be feeling confident, too. They begin 2024 in receipt of both this year’s BBC Sound of… award and the Brits’ Rising Star gong. Their preceding 12 months have been an inexorable rise. They started selling out gigs when they had released less than nine minutes of music, were lavished with praise by everyone from Florence Welch to Garth Crooks (the latter feeling impelled to interrupt an episode of Football Focus to describe them as “fine young women making really exciting pop music”) and have weathered the inevitable accusations of being an “industry plant” that seem as much part of an artist’s swift progress in the 21st century as breathless this-band-will-change-your-life coverage in the weekly music press once was.
