‘I met someone the other day and they were like, ‘Where’s your corset?’” laughs Abigail Morris, lead singer of London’s most anachronistic young band, The Last Dinner Party. Normally, Morris and her four bandmates are kitted out in full baroque ’n’ roll regalia: puff sleeves, lace trims, cinched waists, knee-high boots, the works. Today, they’re regular twentysomethings in a Shoreditch pub, sipping Guinness and going unnoticed by the passing Londoners outside who probably have at least one song by The Last Dinner Party on their Spotify playlist. Sometimes they get recognised. Sometimes they make themselves recognised. “I saw a teenage girl listening to Portrait of a Dead Girl on the train the other day so I just sort of loomed over her,” says bassist Georgia Davies. “When she looked up she was like …” She mimes a jaw drop.
Such is the new-found fame of this five-piece, made up of Morris, Davies, lead guitarist Emily Roberts, rhythm guitarist Lizzie Mayland and keyboardist Aurora Nishevci. And it’s happened awfully quickly. The band were signed by Island Records after label executives were impressed by a video of them performing at Venue MOT in 2022. It was their fourth gig. They blew up a year later, in 2023, when their liberating sing-along debut single, Nothing Matters, hit the charts. Their album, Prelude to Ecstasy, was the biggest UK debut by a band in nine years. Since then, they’ve sold out Hammersmith Apollo three times over, played Glastonbury and Coachella, and are set to play their first arena show this autumn. Their follow-up, From the Pyre, out on October 17, looks and sounds like it’s sure to launch the band to even bigger heights.
