The Last Dinner Party: 'Being a hyped, buzzy band can be a curse'

It's a boiling Friday afternoon in July 2023, and The Last Dinner Party have gathered around a picnic table at the Latitude Festival, waiting for their stage transport.

"You have to get on a boat," says singer Abigail Morris. "So whimsical, isn't it?"

The journey is necessary because the band have been booked to play the tiny Sunrise Arena, which sits on the opposite side of a man-made lake from the festival's dressing rooms.

But the five-piece draw such a big crowd that it spills out of the tent and into the surrounding forest, as fans clamour to hear their bombastic art-rock anthems.

"Christ, there are a lot of you," gasps Abigail as she takes to the stage.

For the next 30 minutes, the band are on fire, playing with purpose and swagger while Abigail pirouettes around the stage, dressed like Wednesday Addams playing a character from Bridgerton.

During the darkly dramatic Mirror, she jumps into the audience, before realising there's no way back to her bandmates.

"Misjudged the height of the stage," she deadpans, after running around the back of the tent to reclaim her place.

The reception is immense, especially for a band who only released their first single in April.

People know all the words, even to unreleased songs. Some have come dressed in the floral crowns and billowing white tops the band wear in their videos.

So how did they get here?

Their origin story isn't particularly notable. The five-piece met as students on the hunt for cheap beer and live music. Morris was at King's College with Georgia Davies (bass) and Lizzie Mayland (guitar), while Aurora Nishevci (keyboards) and Emily Roberts (guitar) were studying "real music" at the Guildhall School of Music and Drama.

"Our friendship was built on going to gigs and wanting to be a part of that scene," says Abigail, recalling formative nights watching Black Midi, HMLTD and Goat Girl around London's club circuit.

"I went to The Windmill in Brixton more than I went to lectures," says Georgia.

Deciding to form a band of their own, the group had just moved into a rehearsal room when Covid struck.

But rather than derail their ambitions, lockdown gave them space to grow.

"By the time we emerged from the chrysalis, we were fully formed," says Georgia. "We played our first show like it was the Pyramid Stage. There was never a choppy, scrappy period."

They spent more than a year slogging it out on the live circuit before committing any music to tape, recognising that organic growth was preferable to flash-in-the-pan viral success.

But when their first single finally arrived, the deluge of approving reviews was treated with suspicion.

Suddenly, the band were accused of being "industry plants" and "nepo babies" by people who (deliberately, you suspect) overlooked the hours they'd put in.

The evidence, people said, was clear-cut. The band were signed to Island Records and managed by Q Prime, who also look after Metallica and Muse. How else could an unknown quintet have generated such a buzz?

Well, it's the music, stupid.

Nothing Matters is a perfect debut, an unbridled declaration of lust that quivers with dramatic urgency.

"If this is what it means to be an industry plant, I think the industry should keep on planting stuff," observed The Darkness's Justin Hawkins as he reviewed the song.

Rather than let the criticisms stick, Georgia fought back on social media - calling the accusations "a nasty lie" and insisting The Last Dinner Party weren't "put together like some K-pop girl band".

"It's not about the music," she tells the BBC. "It's something that people have made up and then got angry about."

Even so, the backlash was impossible to ignore as they headed into festival season.

"We felt more pressure because there'd been so many people talking about it," says Abigail.

"Being this hyped, buzzy band can be a bit of a curse. I think we feel like we have something to prove."

By the time we catch up October, the debate has disappeared. Two more singles and a triumphant headline tour have put the naysayers in their place while BBC 6 Music has named them one of their artists of the year.

We meet backstage at EartH in Hackney, where the band are playing two sold-out nights - a stark comparison with their previous tour where, Abigail jokes, "no-one came".

"It's quite a shock to suddenly show up at a venue and it's 1,000 people there specifically for us," she says, with the stuffy tones of an autumn cold.

The whole band are suffering. Herbal teas are being brewed and Day Nurse imbibed. But on stage, there's no sign of slow-down.

"This next one is about feminine rage," declares Abigail, cueing up the devilish Feminine Urge, in which she spits: "Do you feel like a man when I can't talk back?"

Aurora steps up to perform the Albanian-language song Gjuha, which, she says, "is about me feeling shame [about] not knowing my mother tongue very well".

And Abigail dives into the crowd again during My Lady Of Mercy, thankfully having mapped out her route back to the stage in advance.

They even find time to play a new song, Zecond Bezt [sic], which is so fresh it missed the deadline for the band's debut album, Prelude To Ecstasy, which comes out next February.

When asked, the band confess that's because the record has been waiting in the wings for almost a year.

"We recorded it in one or two weeks last November and then had a little break over Christmas, when I wrote all the orchestral parts, and we finished it off in January," says Aurora.

The obvious stand-out was Nothing Matters, which started out as a piano ballad before Abigail let her bandmates get their hands on it.

"It was this sad, slow thing. And then I was like, 'No, put trumpets on it!'" she says.

"But it only became what it was because I'm in this band. If I was a solo artist, I wouldn't have written a guitar solo.

"It's a great example of... er, I don't know what the phrase is," she says, scrabbling for the right words.

"Many people make good? A meeting of minds? Just enough cooks make the really best broth and one cook can't do it."

Her bandmates dissolve in laughter. "That's the headline," jokes Lizzie.

For the debut album, Abigail instigated most of the songs, drawing on her diary for lyrics about "relationships and turmoil and trying to understand my place in the world".

One of the stand-outs is the erotically charged My Lady Of Mercy which, she says, examines the tussle between her faith and her desire.

"I went to Catholic school from the age of 10 to 16 and those are very formative, very turbulent years for a young woman." she explains.

"I remember feeling simultaneously resentful and enthralled by the imagery I was surrounded by - which was restrictive and dangerous but, at the same time, very beautiful and sensual."

The song was inspired by Bernini's baroque marble sculpture The Ecstasy of Saint Teresa, which depicts a nun swooning in the presence of an angel.

"I remember seeing it and feeling feelings," says Abigail, who wants the song to help "girls and boys like me, who don't want to disassociate from their Catholic upbringing, and let them re-write it in a way that's not homophobic and oppressive".

That spirit of inclusiveness and freedom courses through the band's music and their concerts.

Fans are responding in kind, adopting the band's medieval costumes and turning concerts into an elaborate bonanza of fancy dress.

"People are making their costumes by hand," marvels Georgia. "This girl I met yesterday had like Greek God horns made out of synthetic hair and woven into her own hair. The amount of detail that people go to is incredible."

For Abigail, the sense of community is powerful.

"We did a show in Hull a few days ago and I was in the mosh pit spinning about - and every single face around me was a woman.

"And I was like, 'Oh, we've done it. An all-female mosh pit'. So that was very beautiful. If we can give women and non-binary people that, that's all we really need to do."

Go and see them now if you can. Even if you have to catch a boat.