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The Last Dinner Party: Prelude to Ecstasy review – the year’s most hyped band totally deliver

The five-piece ground their Sparks-like tendency towards excess and musical theatre with consistently well-written songs primed for festival singalongs

They seem to have arrived fully formed, although that’s the result of nothing more sinister than frantic woodshedding during the gig-free Covid years: looking fabulous and teeming with ideas, among them their penchant for announcing dress codes for their gigs – Victoriana, Brothers Grimm, Velvet Goldmine – a smart way of both lifting their shows out of the ordinary and creating a sense of IRL community. Prelude to Ecstasy is well produced – boasting string arrangements mercifully less histrionic than the introduction might suggest, a glossy sheen and some nice touches courtesy of James Ford, the long, shoegaze-y coda of bending tones that concludes On Your Side among them – but it doesn’t sound that different from the video of their third gig that was posted to YouTube, sparking a stampede among major labels and management companies. Operatic cut-glass vocals, sudden shifts in mood and tempo, big guitar solos, plus lyrics that transform relationship woe into the stuff of jump-scare-heavy crime drama (“now there’s blood in my lipgloss”, “I wish I had given you the courtesy of ripping out my throat”, “I am a dark red liver stretched out on the rocks”): as you might expect, there are moments when all this becomes a bit much, as when they break out the timpani literally seconds into Mirror, or Beautiful Boy sails a little too close to musical theatre for its own good.

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