Excessively anticipated, the debut album lives up to its promise to aspire to compete with music's greats and proves worthy of the hype.
Words: Lloyd Bolton
The meteoric rise of The Last Dinner Party is about as well-documented and widely acknowledged as could happen in music. An awareness of those in the know of major label offers formed in the immediate wake of their first performances, and this cognizance spread wider among music fans as the band supported The Rolling Stones, had the routine Next Big Thing articles from the NMEs of the world and eventually announced their signature to Island Records. Now even Graham Norton is on board, the band have won their first BRIT, and it seems like a fait accompli that their debut album, 'Prelude to Ecastasy,' is to be one of the defining albums of 2024.
One cannot help but feel that all this has set some self-identifying 'proper music fans' up to resent them as a new packaged pop band, another 'industry plant' just like Wet Leg supposedly were, and all the rest of it (a response discussed in depth in this interview with Polyester). Well yes, the cogs of the star maker machinery have indeed been at work here bringing The Last Dinner Party from The George Tavern to Radio 2 to the BRITs, but you can't hold it against a band that they are living their dream. The music industry has never been some pure meritocracy that gives all music the chance to be recorded, distributed, promoted and loved equally. We should be thankful when such good acts get these kinds of opportunities to compete with blander alternatives, and grateful that they build the reputation of places like The George Tavern, which they talk up in interviews, returned to for this Halloween's covers weekender and even used to photograph their album cover.
This situation makes for an interesting case study, and as such, we find ourselves two paragraphs in with scant reference to the songs. Let us now take this album for what it is: A full-blown, singalong album, designed to be not simply accessible but addictive, designed to say everything there is to say about life in three-minute bursts and sparkling with glam opulence. The result certainly approaches this, and though certain limitations hold it back, it nonetheless coheres into an exciting debut.

Everything about this project and this record speaks of the ambition with which it was conceived, before "the industry" got involved. Unpicking the influences, only big names come to mind: Lana, Bowie, Sparks, Kate Bush, ABBA. Indeed, who since ABBA has had the guts to aspire to sounding like ABBA? The 'Prelude' is knowingly overblown, telling us all we need to know about the cinematic grandeur to the music that follows. It sets up a record that demands your attention for the next 40 minutes with all the vividity and conviction and entertainment value of a blockbuster. As a collection, the songs are slipped together seamlessly, masterfully guiding the peaks and troughs in mood, with the big tunes grouped together between moments of breathing space.
'Burn Alive,' the first 'song song' on the album, is the perfect introduction to the band. It is romantic, melodramatic, and its reverberating drum pulse ties its intimacy to the universal. Candle wax melts, hearts shatter, and all the while the energy goes up and up, in accordance with the Ronettes' playbook. It was this brazen emotion that won hearts and minds with their debut single's chorus, "And you can fuck me like nothing matters," and continued to shine through the Catholic-schooled follow-up 'Sinner.'
When it works, it works fantastically, but at times, the magic feels a little too laboured. 'Caeser on a TV Screen,' is a track that plays with some interesting ideas but loses conviction as it tries too hard to make its point. The build to the chorus comes suddenly, breaking the established rhythm with a barrage of lyrics that squeeze into their allotted space as they try to say very literally the thought being expressed. It is a tendency that mars a few points across the album, also showing up in the construction of 'Beautiful Boy' ("Beatuiful boy, beautiful boy, I wish I could be a beautiful boy") and the explanatory mid-chorus aside in 'Feminine Urge': "Do you want me or do you want control?" The Warholian title image of 'Caesar…' and the repeated idea that once successful, "everyone will like me then" is expressed well across the song (and grimly apes the position the band find themselves in at this juncture between the scene and stardom), but at points it feels as if the listener isn't trusted to interpret the song for themselves and must be told its meaning as if this were a musical theatre piece.

Of course, this theatrical tone is not a million miles away from the atmosphere the band look to create. With this in mind, 'Portrait of a Dead Girl' could be considered the defining song of this collection and certainly one of its best. Orchestral details poke through across 'Prelude to Ecstasy,' but here they are most convincing in their application, elevating what is already a symphonic melody line to the ecstatic heights promised by the album's title. The tune, worthy of 'ABBA Gold,' relates a more contemporary sentiment, and as the strings win our hearts, the "over and over again" of the chorus propels the song through the pop stratosphere. All this before the band form a chorus on which the song glides out, delineated by a noodling guitar.
On an album that celebrates the timelessness of great songwriting, musically and lyrically, it is these guitars that do much to date the sound. Flangey and instructive of a song's melodic direction, they make the tracks feel a little tired. 'Sinner' is an otherwise great track, but the insistent guitar line over the chorus short circuits the euphoria, gesturing unabashedly to the 1970s and also giving the conclusive epic feeling of the end of a song.

These guitar lines, which often come through a little too sharply, also draw attention to another issue that crops up a few times across the record which is its mixing. This should be something of a perfunctory process for a high budget album full of such well-written songs, yet on 'Prelude to Ecstasy,' there are a number of moments one can't help but long for it to all sound a bit.. bigger. 'Feminine Urge,' with its immaculate, Sparks-like chorus line, singalong vocals and big drums gets the tone right, as does 'Burn Alive' and 'Portrait of a Dead Girl.' Yet the two lead singles, 'Nothing Matters' and 'Sinner,' are both especially wanting in terms of mix. These are great songs but the choruses feel strangely empty. On 'Sinner', guitars drown the drums and the "felt like a sin" line repeats too loudly so that it falls into a vacuum, leaving the choral countermelody low and failing to quite break the surface. These elements hold the album back from completely being the cathartic party collection it should be.
Taken as a whole, however, this is an outstandingly accomplished debut album, and each track offers at least a flash of brilliance. We are scrutinising some relatively minute details, and in part that is a lingering symptom of this band's being under the microscope since the first hints that they had become destined for stardom. At the same time, it is also because this collection of songs forms a convincing attempt to be a perfect pop album. How many albums have you heard recently that come anywhere close to entering into that debate?
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