Album Review: Prelude To Ecstasy - The Last Dinner Party

In order to keep eternally cranking, the infernal machine of pop regularly casts dice on a new hope. Enter The Last Dinner Party, togged out like the cast of The Adult Channel Does Jane Austen. Overcoming frustrated males shouting about “industry plants” – who cares, even if they are, which they’re not – they won over the people that matter – the audience – with arse-bruising and headliner-embarrassing live performances and a series of singles that should feature prominently on page one of the latest edition of the Setting Out Your Stall manual.

“Nothing Matters’ and ‘Sinner’ sound like late period ABBA on a melodic sex bender weekend in the hotel of lust. ‘My Lady Of Mercy’ appears to have another even better song altogether crashing into the chorus from an opera next door and would surely have Keats slightly rephrasing himself, "La Belle Dame avec Merci, Thee hath in thrall!". ‘On Your Side’ is Coldplay’s ‘Fix You’ being given the sound thrashing it has always deserved and, best of all, ‘Caesar on a TV Screen’ speaks to their admirable aims by copping a feel of Mick Ronson era Bowie.

If you didn’t feel "like an emperor with a city to burn" at least once as a child, or more recently, then you’ve no business applying for this pop star job in the first place. Not only can they write such a mission-defining middle eight but they can then casually follow it with the line "It's raining like it did in Leningrad." My God, that's seamanship.

The album they’ve wrapped around those cuts lives up to the hope and hype, from the opening portentous/pretentious ‘Prelude’ - which sounds like Maurice Jarre being drunkenly dared to beef up Gershwin's 'Rhapsody in Blue' and is criminally brief - to the closing gloomy brilliance of ‘Mirror’, a song so good it might convince Lana Del Ray to take early retirement.

Abigail Morris' glorious voice on ‘Burn Alive’ is a cross between Siouxsie Sioux and what Florence Foghorn wishes she sounded like ("There is candle wax melting in my veins" What does that mean? No idea but it sounds impressive) before it heads casually off towards the clouds and there’s daring choral/instrumental arrangements, melodic invention, and real beauty throughout ‘Feminine Urge’ (tastefully twanging guitar), ‘Beautiful Boy’ (flutes, flutes for the love of Jaysus and multi-layered harmonies that you'd blindly propose marriage to), ‘Gjuha’ (a Carmina Buranaesque cantata, with mandolin), and ‘Portrait’ (the best Suede song in years with a "give me the strength" refrain that will induce goosebumps in places you don't even have skin).

A record bursting at the seams with vaulting, magnificent, and refreshing ambition. The pop machine wins again.