All scrutiny and opinions aside, The Last Dinner Party seemed to take well to their swift rise to fame. The Brixton five-piece went from supporting the Rolling Stones in a festival lineup to gaining accolades in what seemed like a flash. But they took it all in their stride and their 2024 debut album Prelude to Ecstasy garnered success in what felt like one fell swoop, making history as the UK’s biggest first week-selling debut album in nine years. Some might call the past few years dramatic, but with their opulent, orchestrated, and ostentatious music, The Last Dinner Party seemed to thrive amidst it all.
The sophomore album for any band in this situation would come with high expectations. It makes sense then that the five-piece sought to keep some constants: Alan Moulder on the mixing desk, Chris Gehringer on mastering duties, and James Ford as producer. Unfortunately due to illness, Ford had to step away, so Markus Dravs was called in. With credits including Coldplay, Wolf Alice, Mumford & Sons, Hozier and Florence and the Machine under his belt, he seemed like a more than adept replacement for The Last Dinner Party: an ear of experience for acts and albums that skirt the lines around the indie pop genre and bring home the accolade award bacon.
How strange then for an album from a well-versed producer and band with flair for days to sound so distinctly lacking in any defining quality. From The Pyre has all the ingredients for something that should shine brightly enough, but somehow doesn’t; the mix is lacking in treble and the whole thing is vacant of any sort of signature mark. Guitars wail, piano chords rumble, and lead singer Abigail Morris showcases her impressive vocal range; songs are punctuated with overtures, extended bridges, and even an interlude sung in French, all constructed like small tragedies for the stage with scene changes aplenty. The album even begins on the word “‘Twas”! This is The Last Dinner Party, sure, but like on Prelude to Ecstasy, they sound flatter than they should and notably moreso than they do live on stage. That distinctive flair that helps define them and set them apart – that very quality that could make them iconic! – gets vaporised at all the wrong times, making them indistinct when they should shine. The main issue with From The Pyre is a simple one: I hear it, but I don’t feel it.
The best offerings on the album are those where the production isn’t needed to show off their abilities. “The Scythe” is a plainfaced meditation on inevitable grief, death, and rebirth, and feels refreshingly direct. “Don’t cry, we’re bound together / Each life runs its course / I’ll see you in the next one,” Morris sings with an accepting pang in her throat that is genuinely moving. Similarly the buoyant “Sail Away” strips back to just piano and vocals, and without any theatrics masking it, it serves as an admirable attempt to freeze beautiful moments in time and appreciate life’s little details that flutter by.
When the drama is high there is fun to be had too, even if it is missing a certain something. The stomping “Second Best” is easy enough to get caught up in, and the indulgent opening number “Agnus Dei” casts incantation as a come-on (“Was that enough / To make you come?”). “This Is The Killer Speaking” turns brooding Arctic Monkeys-like verses into a full-on Elton John/Adam Ant romp, adding up to what’s essentially a flamboyant take on “Here Comes Your Man”. It’s all enjoyable enough, but there isn’t a track on From The Pyre that goes for the jugular the way “Nothing Matters” did (and still does). Granted, this is a self-described earthier album, but it often comes out the ground stodgy; from the title alone it’s aiming for something akin to the folk-horror of The Wicker Man, but instead feels closer to the contemplative 2024 Athina Rachel Tsangari film Harvest.
The drama is still there, but even with vignettes and costumes, meaning and intention get lost. With all the biblical iconography and violent imagery (“Open me up, butcher my heart”, “You carved your name inside of my thigh”), it can be hard to discern exactly what Morris is actually getting at, if indeed it’s latching onto any kind of everyday feeling. So much still feels regal where it needn’t, the theatre masking the meaning. A track like “I Hold Your Anger” stands out because it veils its meaning, but not too much. Over woozy piano, folk-tinged violin, and a bleary, melancholic atmosphere, we get a dissection of maternal expectations of society and Morris’ anxieties that stem from them. “I hold your sorrows, hold your fears / Hold your anger in my tears / Nobody asked me to / But that is what I’m meant to do,” she seethes, holding back from unleashing generational fury.
There may be plenty to unpack across the album (how “Woman is a Tree” could be considered a sequel to “The Feminine Urge”, the tableaus on the cover art representing each song here, the way Morris pronounces “television” on “This Is The Killer Speaking” like Nigella Lawson pronounces “microwave”), but what’s disappointing is how From The Pyre leaves the listeners with such little enthusiasm to actually go exploring. The band dish out hooks to the best of their ability, full of gusto and vim, but the sparkle is missing; the ecstasy they mentioned in the title of their debut is still absent, despite the ambition shown here.
Come final track “Inferno” we get swirling embers instead of the promised firestorm in the title; Dravs gives us the pop of a bottle of prosecco where there should be an explosion. Swinging through an identity crisis and complete with comparisons to Jesus Christ and Joan of Arc, Morris and the rest of the band drum up to a sudden end. The stage is set, the drama high, and The Last Dinner Party sound ready for the next act after an interval. From The Pyre isn’t quite the stunning continuation they hoped for, but with optimism, that ecstasy is still somewhere down the line. Once the curtain opens again, the hope is they at least sound like they actually do on stage instead of a pale version of their capabilities and talent.
