Album Review: The Last Dinner Party – From the Pyre
3 min read
In 2023 The Last Dinner Party burst onto the scene with theatrical flair and a baroque-pop drama. Following this exciting brand of music that sounded like yesteryear (in a good way) a Mercury Prize ensued for their debut Prelude to Ecstasy – and now the London five-piece offer us From the Pyre, released via Island Records. Written on the road and recorded between Berlin and London, the chaos of constant motion and new experiences that come with sudden success look to take centre stage and provide bucket loads of inspiration. So lets get right into this….
We start with Agnus Dei, of the highest TLDP standards, a track with shades of Rosalie Cunningham about it, and move to Count the Ways – a bass straight from Do I Wanna Know? (Arctic Monkeys) and very Sparks-like. Second Best follows third (weirdly), weaving in styles from a very Kate Bush-style verse and Siouxsie and the Banshees chorus – a very strong track, probably my favourite. Next up we step into classic spaghetti western instrumentation in This Is the Killer Speaking with fantastic lyrics about being ghosted (love it!), and this is followed by Rifle – haunting, raw, powerful and visceral… another very strong track, shades of Zeppelin about it.
Woman Is a Tree continues the cinematic qualities to each track, this time beginning very much like a Yellowjackets track, with incredible harmonies, whilst I Hold Your Anger has a great guitar solo and feels a bit Florence + the Machine – quite the compliment, BTW. Rounding the bend, Sail Away, what can only be described as a beautiful ethereal track, with perfect piano accompaniment to the vocals, and penultimate track The Scythe is, if possible, even better – I very rarely quote lyrics, but “Don’t cry, we’re bound together, Each life runs its course, I’ll see you in the next one, Next time I know you’ll call” really got to me on a not quite 100% related, but very personal level. Finally we have Inferno – as close to a perfect finale song as you could have hoped for – upbeat, that will to go on regardless.
It’s clearly a fantastic album, let’s start there. From the Pyre is all killer no filler, an album you can listen to, start-to-end, without feeling like skipping. There will be some detractors who don’t like this baroque-style blend that utilises various inspirations from current day whilst also harking back to classic rock of the 1970’s, but I suspect there will be many many more that do. I have little to no doubt that if we were to see a return/rehash of the rock opera, then these guys will be at the forefront of the movement. There are 3 or 4 extremely strong tracks on the album, but this is yet another where the full album is added to my favourites. Give it a listen – it’s the best example of this genre out there in… well… since their last album!!
