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The Last Dinner Party is throwing a baroque-pop rager and all are invited

From the moment the five members of The Last Dinner Party first banded together, their plan was resolute.

"We all aligned with wanting to try really hard and really see if we could do this properly," says vocalist Abigail Morris during the band's visit to World Cafe's studio. "That's why we put a lot of thought into it before we even played our first show — how we wanted to look and, not strategy, but how we wanted to be, as a band."

So far, that plan has been paying off for the London band. They've opened for The Rolling Stones and Florence + the Machine. They've performed at Glastonbury, and most recently, the indie rock outfit nabbed the 2024 BRIT Award for rising star.

The Last Dinner Party's Emily Roberts (from left), Lizzie Mayland, Abigail Morris, Aurora Nishevci and Georgia Davies
Cal McIntyre / Courtesy of the artist
/
Courtesy of the artist
The Last Dinner Party's Emily Roberts (from left), Lizzie Mayland, Abigail Morris, Aurora Nishevci and Georgia Davies

That early success — all before the band has even released a full-length debut album — has led some people to accuse The Last Dinner Party of being an industry plant.

"I've had people message me, being like, 'Did you actually write and play the guitar solo on 'Nothing Matters'?' " says guitarist Lizzie Mayland. "Like, yeah. Why wouldn't I have? We're a band. That's what we do. That did annoy me quite a lot."

As you'll see in today's session, the band isn't letting that tired label stop them from killing it on stage. They stopped by WXPN during their very first American tour to talk about Prelude to Ecstasy, their debut album due out on Feb. 2, 2024, plus why they take so much care in curating their live shows.

"It heightens the sense of community and the world that we're inhabiting," Morris says. "A sort of extended universe that the audience is also involved in, so it makes it feel more theatrical and emotional — like we've all come to this party together."

Also, make sure to stay tuned for an extended version of this session after Prelude to Ecstasy comes out next year.

This episode of World Cafe was produced and edited by Kimberly Junod. The web story was created by Miguel Perez. Our engineer is Chris Williams. Our programming and booking coordinator is Chelsea Johnson and our line producer is Will Loftus.

Copyright 2023 XPN

Raina Douris
Raina Douris, an award-winning radio personality from Toronto, Ontario, comes to World Cafe from the CBC (Canadian Broadcasting Corporation), where she was host and writer for the daily live, national morning program Mornings on CBC Music. She was also involved with Canada's highest music honors: hosting the Polaris Music Prize Gala from 2017 to 2019, as well as serving on the jury for both that award and the Juno Awards. Douris has also served as guest host and interviewer for various CBC Music and CBC Radio programs, and red carpet host and interviewer for the Juno Awards and Canadian Country Music Association Awards, as well as a panelist for such renowned CBC programs as Metro Morning, q and CBC News.
Kimberly Junod
World Cafe senior producer Kimberly Junod has been a part of the World Cafe team since 2001, when she started as the show's first line producer. In 2011 Kimberly launched (and continues to helm) World Cafe's Sense of Place series that includes social media, broadcast and video elements to take listeners across the U.S. and abroad with an intimate look at local music scenes. She was thrilled to be part of the team that received the 2006 ASCAP Deems Taylor Radio Broadcast Award for excellence in music programming. In the time she has spent at World Cafe, Kimberly has produced and edited thousands of interviews and recorded several hundred bands for the program, as well as supervised the show's production staff. She has also taught sound to young women (at Girl's Rock Philly) and adults (as an "Ask an Engineer" at WYNC's Werk It! Women's Podcast Festival).