You Are Cordially Invited To… The Last Dinner Party
The last 12 months of The Last Dinner Party have been meteoric. Between playing Glastonbury, winning a BRIT award and having their debut album reach no.1 on the charts, this quintet has experienced a trajectory most dream of. No wonder they are this generation's music icons. Ahead of their Australian debut, bassist Georgia Davies tells all...
Words by Zara Richards | Image by Leonn Ward
It’s a story that starts like any other. Two South London friends find themselves in a pub with wine in their system and a dream of a life bigger than their own. On a pad of paper, they jot down all the traits their make-believe band would have: a sound, shape and style unlike anything emerging from the music scene in England’s capital in 2019.
That fantasy now is known as The Last Dinner Party, the buzziest band in the UK today.
“It’s so funny how eventful that night ended up being because it was so innocuous,” says the band’s bassist, Georgia Davies, via video call. “It was no different from any of [our other] nights of heady imagination gone wild”. The Sydney-raised, London-made musician is dialling in from a hotel somewhere in Barcelona a day before she and the rest of the band – comprising Abigail Morris, Lizzie Mayland, Emily Roberts and Aurora Nishevci – are due to play at Primavera Sound. A month after we speak, The Last Dinner Party will fly Down Under to headline their first Australian tour and play Spin Off on July 19.
“[The band] was pretty much a thought experiment of what would be a cool project to do,” Georgia continues. “And then all of a sudden, I’m doing this and I’m going to Australia. The experiment has gone wild!”
Each line the blonde bassist says is bright and breezy, delivered with an ease you’d expect from a close friend over a round of ciders – not a musician who’s spent the last 12 months garnering a global cult following.
In April of 2023, the quintet dropped their debut single ‘Nothing Matters’ – a baroque pop-rock anthem that feels feral with its passion and lust. It catapulted the band from obscurity to the lofty heights of music fame (the song has over 96 million streams on Spotify to date) and earned them sets at bucket-list festivals like Glastonbury. Four songs later, the quintet had played Latitude, Reading and Leeds Festival, opened for acts like Florence + The Machine, and received the Rising Star BRIT Award (previously won by household names like Adele). Only 289 days after their first-ever single, The Last Dinner Party released their debut album, Prelude to Ecstasy, in February 2024. It shot straight to No.1 on the UK Album Charts.
The Last Dinner Party's rise has been meteoric – a swift ascent to the top that's seen the five-piece become global figureheads for this generation of music lovers. They've also attracted some bogus 'industry plant' claims from those jealous of their success. But this five-piece stand under the sunny glow of success for a very different reason: their thick friendship and their love for playing London's pub circuit (plus a little bit of luck, too).
The band finessed their avant-garde rock sound at sporadic band practices between Britain's brutal lockdowns. They played their first gig in November 2021 to about 20 people. Three months later, videographer Lou Smith captured 28 minutes of The Last Dinner Party's raw talent and hedonistic stage presence at their third-ever gig. This clip exploded the quintet, turning them into the must-see band in London's music scene. In turn, The Last Dinner Party leant into the grassroots hype and grafted, playing bigger venues with more bodies throughout 2022 without releasing a single song.
“We were raised by some really eclectic bands in the South London scene and we wanted to be them, basically,” says Georgia of the band’s early days. “[But] we felt there was a gap for a band to express extreme joy and euphoria, but also extreme pain and devastation.”
This pendulum of emotions is what The Last Dinner Party explore on their ambitious debut album, Prelude to Ecstasy. It’s a record that evokes the grandiose, grotesque and giddy feelings of girlhood.
A visceral pop-rock sound dripping with religious ideology, heady imagery and decadent indulgence weaves through songs that feel ripped straight from diary pages. No track pussyfoots around the band’s thoughts on sexuality, love and queer identity. ‘Caeser on a
TV Screen’ pokes fun at the perceived power a masculine figure has; ‘Sinner’ “turns to the altar of lust” and explore desire, shame and queer self-acceptance; ‘The Feminine Urge’ illuminates the intergenerational trauma mother-daughter relationships can hold; and ‘Beautiful Boy’ is filled with envy about how freely men move through the world.
READ MORE: Rising Star Rona.
Georgia notes The Last Dinner Party lyrics simply communicate their experiences. Nothing the band has ever written has been “an intentional political statement.” She uses ‘Nothing Matters’ to explain her point: subverting the active roles of heteronormative sex wasn’t a cognisant decision, she says, but a natural one. “Only in having to change the swear word [in the chorus] did we realise it was such an important part of the song – the act of ‘I will fuck you’ not ‘I will hold you’. A lot of the time, anything we do that comes across as being political is by pure accident. But we don’t shy away from it either. I think being ourselves is inherently politicised more than male bands.”
Being a female and non-binary band in 2024 shouldn’t feel radical – many outfits have pioneered the path The Last Dinner Party is currently on. Georgia agrees. “But I think we severely underestimated the power of young women – and young men – seeing [us] as guitar gods and rockstars.
“Now we realise, we feel a responsibility to keep being unapologetically us and not compromise on the things we set out to do. It’s a strange position to be in, but it’s one of the main motivators that keeps us going – representing the weird, social outcast kids who are now seeing themselves on the big screen.”
There’s an escapist element to The Last Dinner Party, too – something that’s seen thousands of people turn to their music and live shows as a distraction from the global climate. Georgia feels this: “When we started the band – and also now – the world was fucked. It’s difficult to exist in this plane of reality with the amount of horrific stuff you see on the news. For us, the coping mechanism is, musically, escapism – trying to create a world that’s more romantic and beautiful as a way to cope with how fucked everything is.”
This fantasy is, in part, actualised through the aesthetic of the band. No show is complete without the quintet donned in petticoats and corsets, ribbons, red tights, leather and lots of lace – the perfect attire for deliriously dancing on stage. “The visual side we always thought of as 50 percent of the mission statement,” the bassist says. Early The Last Dinner Party gigs had a dress code so the crowd reflected the band’s coquettish, Renaissance-like style.
“We were always those people who would wear a ballgown just to go to the pub and sit in the corner,” says Georgia. “We wanted to provide a space for other people like us to feel as if they can express themselves. It’s a lovely side effect of what we do – [creating] a community for people to come together and feel unjudged.”
Right now, The Last Dinner Party are staring down the barrel of building their sophomore album. Georgia confesses each member has had their own ‘anxiety nightmare’ about following the success of their first. But friendship is what keeps their concerns (and themselves) grounded.
“We’re so excited about what we’re writing now,” she says. “And we’re not too concerned with having another ‘Nothing Matters’ moment. It’s more about continuing to pursue our creative interests and seeing what happens because that’s how ‘Nothing Matters’ was born, that’s how the whole first record was born.
“What will allow us longevity [is] having five people who care deeply about the project. Our friendship is the most crucial thing in the world. We protect it so much because we know that’s the core of the band. Without it, the whole thing would collapse.”
See The Last Dinner Party at Spin Off alongside acts like Conan Gray, girl in red and more this Friday, July 19. Tickets on sale now via Moshtix.
