On stage in Dublin last December, Abigail Morris seems ever so slightly to fall apart. She is the lead singer in the Last Dinner Party — one of those bands that seem to come from nowhere and then, suddenly, are everywhere. It is midnight in a tiny venue called the Workman’s Club by the Liffey and the queue snakes up a few blocks. Fans skip drinks at the bar to grab a spot at the front instead and the merch stand is bled dry — which is frankly a bit mad, considering the band has only released four songs. One of which is the euphoric ballad On My Side. Five tracks into the set Abigail begins to sing it and, one minute and a crowd singalong later, she stops. She giggles at first, when she realises that everybody knows the words, before crying through the first verse and then essentially collapsing.
“When it’s 4am/ And your heart is breaking/ I will hold your hands/ To stop them from shaking,” the adoring crowd sings, as the band play on and Abigail vanishes somewhere, doubled up and weeping.
Soon she composes herself and her default stage style of Freddie Mercury strides, high kicks and jokes kicks back in. “I assume you are all fans of religious trauma?” she asks the Irish crowd. “Well, this one’s about Catholic guilt!” I have never seen a singer this young and confident. The gig is delirious. At one point she crowd surfs. At another she has a pop at a pop star du jour, the singer of the 1975. “If I could get your consent, I would kiss you all!” she yells. “But I’m not Matty Healy!” Some people are just born to be famous.
The Last Dinner Party released their debut single, Nothing Matters, last April. It was a thrilling rock, pop rush that sounded like Abba or Sparks with a guitar solo by Brian May and boasted the all-timer chorus of “And I will f*** you/ like nothing matters!” They sold out the Roundhouse in north London way before anybody had even heard their debut album, Prelude to Ecstasy, which was released on Friday.
Last year was quite a year: big support slots, a US tour and a big Glastonbury set. Even the BBC football pundit Garth Crooks got involved by saying in his column: “Exciting pop music! Lovely stuff.” To cap it all off, the band will be presented with the Brit Rising Star award next month. Previous winners? Adele, Sam Smith, Florence + the Machine.
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No wonder that in Dublin it all gets a bit much. I meet the band before the gig in their hotel bar, to sip teas and coffees. By their own admission the Last Dinner Party consist of three extroverts, who bonded during freshers week at King’s College London — the Londoner Abigail, 24, Lizzie Mayland, 25, from Hebden Bridge, the Aussie Georgia Davies, 25 — and then two introverts from Guildhall School of Music & Drama — Emily Roberts, 25, from Chester, and Aurora Nishevci, 27, from London.
In person they are dressed down. On stage, though, anything goes: corsets, dresses, miniskirts — “gothic, feminine, coquette”, Emily says, smiling. The music is the main draw but the Last Dinner Party have also crafted a free-for-all image fans mimic with passion. In their early days in the indie scene, where most people wear jeans, it helped the band stand out. Their crowds are now a blend of the dressed-up and BBC Radio 6 Music dads.
So who inspired this hotchpotch styling? “Tumblr,” Abigail says. “Rotting away on the internet for years. We’re of the generation where you’d receive a lot of your aesthetic education online. We are made of so many parts because we had access to the entire universe on a f***ing laptop — that uncategorised list of photos and videos, from glam rock to Victoriana.”
“Our music is a bit of everything and our looks are a bit of everything,” Georgia says. “It’s maximalist.”
“We want people to be as curious as we are,” Abigail explains, before Lizzie adds, with some relish: “Go forth and find the beauty!”
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The day that Nothing Matters came out was wild. “Unstoppable!” the respected indie magazine Clash wrote, while the actress Kathy Burke called the song a “corker”. Did the band, who had hitherto largely toiled around south London’s live music scene, keep track of the tornado of online reaction? “At the start I read everything,” Abigail says. “But I found it numbing and that made me sad. I read comments saying how great we were and they meant nothing to me.”
“We are lucky they’re mostly positive, though,” Lizzie adds. Aurora grimaces. “Stay away from Reddit,” she warns, while Emily says she gets more criticism from her dad than she does on the internet.
Still, the launch was not without complication. Cynics labelled them industry plants: there was zero proof, they are just a good band with good songs, signed to the major label Island. But keyboard warriors struggled to fathom their ascent in an age when new artists are largely solo and discovered on TikTok. Of particular ire was their support slot for the Rolling Stones at Hyde Park in 2022. Never mind that they were bottom of the bill. It was, to some, clear evidence of a manufactured stitch-up.
“Not funny,” Abigail says bluntly of the backlash. “We knew it was coming and it was annoying. But, also, it’s not true, so didn’t really hit.” Georgia defends the band by pointing out the number of gigs they had played before being signed. “A load of people just hadn’t been paying attention.”
From left, Aurora Top, £1,120, and skirt, £4,210, Paco Rabanne. Boots, £198, Merrfer. Headpiece, £1,249, Natalia Fedner. Ring, £85, Found and Vision. Emily Bodysuit, £385, Katya Zelentsova. Belts, from £65 each, Rellik. Abigail Rick Owens hat, £445, Rellik. Dress, £620, Nicklas Skovgaard. Chainmail, £15,500, Slim Barrett. Georgia Dress, £4,200, Molly Goddard. Meadham Kirchhoff headpiece and metal top, POA, Found and Vision. Earrings, £2,000, Slim Barrett. Ring, £170, Lauri Jwlry. Lizzie Dress, £185, Amor Mia. Metal top, £735, and necklace, £210, Genevieve Devine. Boots, £335, Justine Clenquet. Tights, £4, Sheerly Touch-Ya. Headpiece, £5,500, Slim Barrett. Earring, £596, Mineralosophie. Ring, £210, Lauri Jwlry. All other items, band’s own
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“I do understand why people were sceptical,” Lizzie, the diplomat, chips in. “Because our rise is just stupid. On our fourth gig we were filmed and that video was passed around the industry and so suddenly we’re talking to music lawyers. I didn’t even know that was a job. That’s just the music industry. It picks people out and gives them an opportunity — and we took it.”
Yet they are still fighting fires. Towards the end of last year the band’s official Twitter/X account posted: “Need lads on here to know that we see the weird shit you post about us and are highly unimpressed! Have some f***ing decorum.”
Georgia grins. She is in charge of social media. What was that about? “I just saw, in indie lad Twitter …” she begins. “Ooh, what a lovely place,” Lizzie eyerolls. Georgia continues: “I saw sexist and objectifying jokes and I thought you shouldn’t let that wash over you. You shouldn’t feel like you have to take the higher ground and be stoic when people talk shit about you.”
• The Last Dinner Party announced as Radio 1’s Sound of 2024
So some issues — such as the industry plant nonsense — could be ignored, but others, that tackle wider issues, should not? “Exactly,” Georgia says. “As it is not just applicable to us. Every woman in music who is trying to make a career for themselves has to put up with sexist comments about their appearance.”
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This is not what their parents had planned. The bandmates have turned their backs on the sort of jobs their uni degrees could lead to. How did that go down? “I still don’t think my grandparents understand!” Georgia says, laughing. “I was doing English lit and was going to become a professor, so it was quite a left turn to say, ‘I’m a bass player in a rock band!’” Was there a point when her parents took it more seriously? “When we got signed, as I wasn’t just f***ing around with my mates. Though I still am, but for money.”
“I did history and French and was going to move to France,” Lizzie admits. “But then I dropped out and did history of art at Goldsmiths, so that was already a conversation with my parents, who said, ‘What are you going to do with that?’”
From left, Georgia Dress, POA, Simone Rocha. Bow, £150, and necklace, £90, Margaux Studios. Swarovski ring, £175, Found and Vision. Lizzie Dress, £1,290, Gui Rosa. Heels, £300, God Save Queens. Tights, £4, Sheerly Touch-Ya. Earring, £160, Genevieve Devine. Ring, £1,100, Slim Barrett. Abigail Skirt, £1,170, Genevieve Devine. Crown, direction by Beth Fenton, made by Luna Dyer. Emily Corset, £3,495, Michaela Stark. Shorts, £462, and gloves, £84, Yuhan Wang. Necklace, £379, Lauri Jwlry. Aurora Bra, £344, Nensi Dojaka. Catherine Buckley dress, £1,200, Karen Vintage. Boots, £85, Rellik. Hairpiece, POA, Slim Barrett. Earrings, £400, Margaux Studios
Before the band Aurora was a piano teacher from a classical background who used to think of music in perfectionist ways, but now thinks about the best ways to have fun. “And I can wear clothes that piano teachers can’t.” Emily, meanwhile, had her “dream job” playing the guitar in Six the Musical, the West End show about Henry VIII’s wives: “I found it difficult to give up.”
As for Abigail? Well, when she broke the news that she was going to be the lead singer in an extravagant pop band, her mum said: “Yeah, obviously?”
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Spend time with the band, however, and Abigail is less a star, more a comet — burning brightly but with a trail of illuminating support. She may write the lyrics, but the songs are put together by all the members. Take, for instance, the opening song on their album. It is an instrumental called Prelude — composed by Aurora. “There is a bombastic ridiculousness to it,” she laughs. “I tried to make it like Beethoven.”
I say, with the best will in the world, that the Last Dinner Party belong in the rich history of British music that recognises pop can be serious but is, also, inherently ludicrous. “We’re not afraid of being pretentious,” Abigail says. “It’s fun.”
That said, the stories in her songs are dark, if told with a camp morbidity, like Edgar Allan Poe meets Monty Python. Can we learn much about Abigail from the lyrics? “Yes!” she states. “I take great pleasure in being explicitly autobiographical — I’ve been an avid diary keeper since 15 and sometimes lyrics come from that, because I do it in a poncey way. I tread the line between immense sincerity and sarcasm — that’s the British attitude. Not being ungrateful or bitter, but not being naive and simpering either.”
They have only been a band for three years and what I like is that, on a day when they play a 300-person venue in Dublin, they do not quibble when I ask what their plans would be for a show at the Sphere in Las Vegas — that enormous ball in the desert where U2 played under a skyline of cinema screens. Instead of saying the idea is ridiculous, they offer up plans and, well, why not? Humility is a bore in pop music and the Last Dinner Party barely seem to have any of it at all.
“Confidence in general,” Abigail states, about what has changed in the time since their first gig and their forthcoming performance at the Brits next month. “What has stayed the same is our ambition.” She looks around at her bandmates — and smiles. “The stage is an extension of our friendship.”
Prelude to Ecstasy by the Last Dinner Party is out now on Island Records
Hair: Alain Pichon using Kevin Murphy. Make-up: Andrew Gallimore using Dior Beauty. Nails: Saffron Goddard at CLM using Dior Vernis and Dior Prestige La Crème Mains de Rose. Set designer: Rachel Thomas at Mini Title
Main and single photographs: from left, Georgia Frill leotard, price on application, Pisces Rising. Headpiece, £980, Slim Barrett. Christian Lacroix earrings, £395, Rellik. Catsuit, POA, Mugler. Emily Dress, £3,350, ShuShu Tong. Aurora Minidress, £625, Susan Fang. Hair comb, £450, Slim Barrett. Veil, £374, Clio Peppiatt. Abigail Dress, £980, Dreaming Eli. Belt, £600, Zana Bayne. Earrings, £980, Slim Barrett. Eyepiece, price on application, Loki Dolor. Lizzie Bra top, £87, and scrunchie, £52, Merrfer. Shorts, £450, Simone Rocha. Bonnet, £300, Pristine. Belt, £350, Genevieve Devine. Earrings, £950, Slim Barrett. Bracelet, £640, Mineralosophie.
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