The Last Dinner Party: 2024

This  FUV Live session is also available as a podcast, "FUV Live Sessions." We're elevating WFUV's long history of live sessions and interviews via a podcast that you can find on Spotify, Apple Podcasts and Amazon Podcasts. New episodes drop every Monday.

The Last Dinner Party's debut album, Prelude to Ecstasy, came tumbling into the universe earlier this year, after a long vamp of hit singles ("Nothing Matters," "Sinner," "Caesar on a TV Screen") and sold-out shows in the UK, Europe and North America. Needless to say, it wasn't merely a debut album for the band — singer and main lyricist Abigail Morris, lead guitarist Emily Roberts, guitarist Lizzie Mayland, keyboardist Aurora Nishevci and bassist Georgia Davies — but the result of a dream and a mission, first conjured on an inebriated night in 2019. All of those plans were kicked into reality by this determined quintet.

Given the group's supreme confidence onstage, it's extraordinary that The Last Dinner Party's first live gig was as recent as November 2021 — a gig I discussed with Abigail, Georgia and Emily in London last July, prior to their BST Hyde Park slot as one of the opening acts for Lana Del Rey. At that time, The Last Dinner Party were impatient for the album's debut, having already wrapped recording Prelude to Ecstasy with producer James Ford by January 2023 — the album gestated for over a year before its release in February 2024.

Fast forward to March of this year, and The Last Dinner Party were taking a North American victory lap on the heels of the album's release, playing sold-out shows in New York at Webster Hall and Brooklyn Steel.

I caught up with Abigail and Aurora in their tour bus parked outside Webster Hall (the bus became its own comedy, when we all couldn't figure out how to open the door to get out). The two bandmates discussed the emotional impact and velocity of this experience now that the record was out in the world. The two friends also touched on some of the ballads that populate the album, such as Aurora's haunting "Gjuha," sung in Albanian, and Abigail's "Beautiful Boy," not a love song, but a contemplation on traveling without fear.

In addition, the band, their management and record label gave FUV the gift of three songs drawn from The Last Dinner Party's electrifying Webster Hall set: "Sinner," "Portrait of a Dead Girl," and "The Feminine Urge," all of which you can hear in this FUV Live session.

[Recorded 3/26/24. Songs courtesy of Q Prime Artist Management and Island Records, live from Webster Hall. Photos courtesy of Emilio Herce for Q Prime. Produced by Meghan Offtermatt.]