The Last Dinner Party’s second album, From the Pyre, is one of this year’s most enjoyable. Its lead single, “This is the Killer Speaking”, is a belter that’ll be around for years. Their musical and pop chops are hard to argue with. They’re a band who can put on a show which combines theatrical opulence and rockin’ zest. I’ve seen them do it. Tonight, however, they undermine themselves during the latter half by sabotaging the concert’s forward momentum
Things start well. The quintet, accompanied by a male drummer introduced as “Luca”, appear on a stage set akin to a ruined church from Wuthering Heights, a bell hangs alone, moss grows on a stoney podium, white curtains waft in a gothic arch, behind it all, a ruched backdrop. They dive straight into a fatless triple-header with no blather; “Agnus Dei” with its memorable “Here comes the apocalypse, and I can’t get enough of it”, the chorus-tastic pomp of “Count the Ways”, and, from their first album, the driving “Feminine Urge”.
During the latter, lead guitarist Emily Roberts, dressed like a jilted pixie bride, attacks her trademark, eight-sided Ernie Ball Music Man St Vincent with gusto. She’s a fabulous player, able to flip with ease between blues-rock rawness and classical delicacy.
Frontwoman Abigail Morris is, naturally, the centre of attention. Clad in a flimsy white see-through dress, chunky jewelled belt, knee-high laced-up boots and a hussar’s jacket, she shows off newly bobbed hair - “It’s just a haircut!”. She comes across as a pre-Raphaelite pop-rock fusion of Rachel Weisz and Keira Knightly, the jolly upper-middle-classn image of the latter fully present. She must be the only rock singer to tell her audience to check the “accoutrements” on the merch stand.
She’s not the only one to sing. The whole band show off plainsong harmonic skills on the acapella “Woman is a Tree”, while keys-player Aurora Nishevci and Lizzie Mayland both front songs. A notable moment is Nishevci’s “Gjuha”, before which she shyly pays tribute to Irish rap provocateurs Kneecap, before delivering its Albanian lyrics accompanied by Roberts on (I think) a bouzouki.
During “Rifle” an audience member collapses, the crowd signals this, and Morris puts the gig on hold while the matter is sorted out. This is all as it should be and the band move on into the unreleased proto-metal rocker “Big Dog”, which is their heaviest number and a blast. From here, however, things grow increasingly irritating.
As The Last Dinner Party relax into our evening together – and they really do appear to be having a lovely time up there – so does the tightness of their delivery. Not the songs themselves, which are impeccably rendered, but the overall pace. There are longer gaps. Often there’s chatty stuff that would work in a small venue but does not in this 3,400 capacity space, notably a long sequence where Morris and (otherwise endearing) Aussie bassist Georgia Davies react to audience requests to design them tattoos. At another point, Morris talks of how they’ve raised £20,000 for food bank charity Bankuet on the tour. This is, of course, excellent, but the information is delivered in an extended cocktail hour ramble.
And there are two further stops for audience “emergencies”. As far as I could tell, the last of these was a crowd member wanting some water. Unfortunately, for better or worse (and I’ll likely receive flack for callousness here), once you give a crowd that power, there’s always going to be elements who embrace personal drama when they otherwise would not.
The above and more combine to spike the pace, to dampen the internal rock’n’roll dynamic which makes such nights fly. The band play their debut single, whopper “Nothing Matters”, with a certain throwaway insouciance, just before an encore which is initially fiery, the fine, aforementioned Queen-attempt-swamp-blues of “This is the Killer Speaking”, but when they stop mid-song for five minutes so that Morris can demonstrate a dance routine, in a manner reminiscent of a sixth form Christmas show, the moment peters out, the edge blunts.
In the spirit of full disclosure, those around me do not seem frustrated by the aspects I’ve criticized, singing along heartily for much of the concert and, indeed, at one point, performing an array of physical movements at the random whim of Georgia Davies. But for this regular gig-goer, the lackadaisical between-song and mid-song pauses during the second half thwarted full revel in what was, otherwise, preposterous entertainment by a band on slick, snappy form.
Below: Watch "This is the Killer Speaking" performed by The Last Dinner Party live on Later... with Jools Holland
