There’s a viral video that’s been haunting me for the last couple of months. In it, Richard Osman talks about the death of the band as a force in popular music. “No one is an a band any more,” he says. He voices an accepted modern truth: Gen Z doesn’t give a crap about bands, much less rock bands. But is that really true? If it is, no one has told the young women in layered skirts and puffed sleeves sitting outside Glasgow’s O2 Academy at 10.30am, waiting for The Last Dinner Party.
It’s been a precipitously swift rise for the London-based, all-female band – a blink of the eye from renowned grassroots music venue The Windmill to BBC Sound Of … and Brit Award wins, a Mercury nomination and a number one album in Prelude To Ecstasy. They’ve been compared to Kate Bush, Sparks, Stevie Nicks, Roxy Music, ABBA, David Bowie and Siouxsie and the Banshees.
This is no night for naysayers. Before the first notes of opener Burn Alive have even hit, the Glasgow crowd – young, mostly female, flouncy – give them a welcome that’s surely as impassioned as any of those legends have ever heard. Indeed, for the first few songs, the band seem overwhelmed. “It’s four songs in,” says front woman Abigail Morris, hand to heart, following a tender audience singalong to Beautiful Boy, “and I’m already going to weep.”
It isn’t until the Sparks-inflected, baroque rock of Sinner that they really take charge from the stage. Sure some of the choreography is twee, but the enthusiasm and brio is real. A frilly cover of Blondie’s Call Me retains the original’s sinew, and Big Dog shows they really can rock out together. Let's hope guitarist Emily Roberts continues to grow into her rock-god promise. Shred, girl, shred!
Almost inevitably, as young, talented women, TLDP have faced fierce backlash – for them focused on their privileged backgrounds. That'll likely wash over, not least because they do seem to genuinely want to do their bit – on tour they’re raising money for food banks and matching the crowd donations pound for pound.
The real trouble with their quick rise is that they’ve not yet had the time to really work who they want to be. Their classic rock, baroque and indie references haven’t fully crystallised into a whole new thing – but they're not far away.
It’s a real magic to be in the room and watch people find their band and there’s no doubt that’s happening for many with The Last Dinner Party tonight. The best bands have always felt like a gang you could join; TLDP grew by a few thousand tonight. Gen Z hasn’t given up on rock bands quite yet.
The Last Dinner Party setlist: O2 Academy, Glasgow, 20 September, 2024
Burn Alive
Caesar on a TV Screen
Second Best
Beautiful Boy
On Your Side
Gjuha
Sinner
Portrait of a Dead Girl
The Feminine Urge
Call Me (Blondie cover)
Mirror
Big Dog
My Lady of Mercy
Encore:
The Killer
Nothing Matters
