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Evening Standard
Evening Standard
Lifestyle
Vicky Jessop

The Last Dinner Party at EartH Hackney review: glam-rock homecoming

“This is sacred ground,” Abigail Morris told the crowd at Hackney’s EartH last night. This was for a very specific reason. The gig was taking place just around the corner from small music venue the Shacklewell Arms, she explained: “the place we came up with the name The Last Dinner Party.”

Haven’t they come a long way since then. Despite being yet to release a debut album, The Last Dinner Party are selling out venues up and down the country – including at EartH, their biggest London headline yet.

The London-based band (comprised of Abigail Morris, Lizzie Mayland, Emily Roberts, Georgia Davies, and Aurora Nishevci) certainly have a lot going for them. They signed with the major label Island before they’d even released their first song, Nothing Matters. Their glam-rock aesthetic feels all rather Marie Antoinette – if the latter stuck some safety pins in her ear and decided to smash the patriarchy.

Their set certainly had fire aplenty. They began with Burn Alive: heavy drumbeats echoed through the venue, overlaid by lead singer Abigail Morris’s characteristically haunting vocals: dressed all in black, she channelled Kate Bush crossed with Florence and the Machine.

Emily Morris of The Last Dinner Party (Redferns)

Hot on its heels came the plaintive Caesar on a TV Screen, then Feminine Urge – “this next one is about feminine rage,” Morris announced, before snarling the lyrics into the microphone with a vengeance. During the following bass-heavy On Your Side, she prowled the stage like a tiger, circling her band mates before dropping dramatically to the ground for the song’s end. There was even time for a brand new track – so new that it hadn’t been named yet.

But it wasn’t all head-thrashing: The Last Dinner Party handled their audience better than many seasoned pros. Beautiful Boy, midway through the set, was underpinned by a gorgeous, swaying melody, performed on a stage bathed in shifting blue light; after that, bandmate Aurora Nishevci stepped forward to perform the Albanian-inspired Gjuha, which, she explained, “is about me feeling shame [from] not knowing my mother tongue very well.” Starting off with a spare, plucked guitar melody, it rapidly built into a cacophony of gorgeous harmonies and wailing voices. In other words, Gothic as hell.

Never one to draw things out, The Last Dinner Party closed their tight one-hour set with a rapid-fire barrage that saw new single My Lady of Mercy followed by the muscular, aggressive Godzilla. To screams from the audience, they finished with the single where it all began: the anthemic Nothing Matters. It was a song for all the doomed lovers out there.

“It’s good to be home,” Morris declared towards the end of the night – and home welcomed them with open arms.

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