A new kind of tension runs through From The Pyre, the second album by The Last Dinner Party. After the triumph of Prelude To Ecstasy, the five Londoners expand their baroque pop language into something richer and more ambitious. Less than two years after their debut, they choose evolution over rupture, building a record that folds in on itself. The final note of the closing track connects back to the opening bars of the first, creating a loop of dreams, love and apocalypse.
Produced by Markus Dravs (Arcade Fire, Florence + The Machine), the album comes close to being a concept work, where each song uses a different character to tell a personal story. It feels darker and grander, more confident in its contrasts and theatrical impulses. Echoes of Kate Bush appear in the visionary passages, Queen in the harmonies, Sparks in the wit, and Bowie in the more glamorous turns. On The Scythe and I Hold Your Anger, Abigail Morris sings with a kind of ceremonial gravity, somewhere between the visionary sensuality of Stevie Nicks and the quiet strength of Annie Lennox, while Emily Roberts shapes her guitar lines with melodic precision, a modern glam heroine in her own right.
The lyrics mix desire, irony and apocalyptic imagery. Catastrophe turns into longing, the end of the world becomes a form of release. The Scythe begins as a love song and grows into an elegy that binds grief and passion in one heartbeat. Agnus Dei, which opens the record, turns pain into personal myth, blending heavenly imagery with an earthy sarcasm. The writing is vivid and full of motion, amplified by arrangements that breathe freely and resist the short-form habits of modern pop. The balance between vitality and control is where the band finds its strength, turning passion into language and chaos into form. In Woman Is a Tree, the voices merge in a ritual chant that drifts between the sacred and the profane, perhaps the album’s most striking moment.
From The Pyre stands as a record of confidence and craft, more mature and more cohesive, aware of its own excesses yet proud of them. With this album, The Last Dinner Party prove they are here to stay. There is still ground left to claim, but they are moving in the right direction, and their theatricality now feels like a weapon, no longer the veil of Māyā that once softened their impact.
Great album review. I have a review of this album sitting in my drafts ready to go. But I think yours is better. I agree with every word.