Review: “Prelude to Ecstasy” by The Last Dinner Party (2024)

Originally posted March 2024

Disclaimer: I'll be honest this is actually an autobiographical snippet followed by a review.

Occasionally, maybe once every 1-2 years, I will post a review of an album. Although I get positive feedback I always feel like I’ve cheated a little. If you’ve read any you will notice I tend to review new material by old bands/artists. Despite by Masters in Music (ooh eer) and being something of a new music expert (whether it be charting stuff, more obscure non-charting stuff, or modern ‘classical’ stuff) in the 90s, my knowledge rapidly plummets from 1999 onwards. This coincided with the demise of 90s Britpop, my preferred genre back then. Around 1997, Britpop acts seemed to collectively decide they wanted to move on from plucky song-writing and get a bit more serious, even ‘arty’, with the whole shebang. The big problem was that half of them, Oasis and Co., just weren’t any good at that. The other half, Blur and Co., were good at it but no-one was interested. They already had Radiohead, after all. So, as my favourite genre collapsed and my music education became more ‘sophisticated’ - I lost touch. In fact, friends of mine will probably recall, while doing my A Level Music, I became rather snobbish. I would greet new popular music with snorts of derision, and although I still had some time for ‘classics’ and my old favourites, my attention was largely dedicated to my rapidly glowing CD collection of classical music. In my defence, I did have some self-awareness. I deliberately hid the fact that I hadn’t actually rushed out and bought Radiohead’s long-awaited ‘Kid A’ on its release in 2000. I knew many would be asking, quite rightly, ‘who even are you anymore, Kev?’.  It would be untrue to say I’ve not known anything since then. I’d say I’ve become that guy who knows a lot of the songs but couldn’t necessarily tell you the artist – or vice-versa. But my ‘expert’ days definitely maybe (get it? Gosh, I’m funny) ended around the turn of the millennium.

Why am I writing this? Because as the clock ticked over to 2024 I decided I genuinely wanted to try and turn that around a bit. I began a ‘actually know some stuff about new music’ project. I started making a playlist of the top 10 singles, updating it every week, listening to it daily, and kept abreast of the album chart too (for which I also created a playlist). I wasn’t prepared for a number a eventualities. Firstly, I’ve actually been quite enjoying it. I’ve yet to come across anything in the singles chart that has blown my mind, and non of it compares to the chart I was listening to some decades ago, but aside from a few dislikes, it’s all alright. I wasn’t prepared for the variety. I expected to be the ‘dad-like’ figure that annoys me (not my own Dad by the way, he actually quite enjoyed much of the music I listened to as a teen). You know what I’m referring to – the middle-aged guy who exclaims “bloody racket - all sounds the flippin’ same nowadays", even though it doesn’t and they’ve heard hardly any of ‘it’ anyway. I wasn’t expecting to hear a number of great albums, new sounds, great style/genre crossovers, and much more. But! What I least expected was The Last Dinner Party's “Prelude To Ecstasy”

The Last Dinner Party is a female group who apparently met in Fresher’s Week at University a few years back, began stirring up some press interest topping some music polls and winning some awards and such in 2023 before releasing their album ‘Prelude to Ecstasy’ in February 2024, which crashed into the official UK Album Chart at Number 1. Their music has been described as ‘art-rock’ (a fairly broad term although more specific than ‘rock’) and ‘baroque-pop’ (a term I’ve heard a lot but despite my higher-education in music, understand what it means even less than those who throw it around). They’ve been compared to Kate Bush, Roxy Music, Queen, Florence and the Machine, and cite David Bowie as a key influence. Despite my reservations about terminology this gave me a flavour of what to expect and hopefully gives you an idea too. They have had largely positive reviews but have come under some non-musical criticism that tends to attack their somewhat privileged background. From what I’ve seen, the criticism is largely based on misquoting and miscontextualising (yea, that aint a word apparently but Shakespeare did that so........) things they’ve said, so it’s flimsy at best.  

I have written before how I like ‘the album’ as an art-form .... a ‘work’ rather than just a vehicle to release a number of tracks simultaneously. ‘Prelude to Ecstasy’ presents in this way. However, I have mixed feelings about the way its executed. It begins with a ‘prelude’, a few minutes of orchestral music that outlines some of the melodies we will later hear. Not to get technical but it feels more like an ‘overture’ than a ‘prelude’..... but that’s just semantics. Unfortunately, although you would think my taste for ‘album as art-form’ would mean I would love this, my initial reaction to this was that it felt a bit too cliché, and I’ve not really shaken this off with subsequent listens (and changes of opinion that I’ll discuss towards the end). Moreover, the start of 1^st ‘proper’ track is quite striking and would be a great album opener without this 1^st minute of orchestral music. That said, if I was making an album it’s probably exactly the sort of thing I would do.

That 1^st ‘proper’ track is ‘Burn Alive’. It opens with a thudding bass drum and bass guitar with a guitar figure above it that is harmonically ambiguous. It seems like F-major in 1^st inversion (the bass plays an A (the third note of the F scale rather than the root F note)) with an added 9^th (G) in the guitar figure of A-G-A-F. The bass then moving up to a B-flat seems to confirm this as a B-flat chord is closely related to F. The guitar figure becomes Bb-G-Bb-F meaning the G becomes an added 6^th which leave some ambiguity without the filled in harmony. A seemingly g-minor chord only offers a little help as this could be chord ‘ii’ of F-major or could suggest that the B-flat is the root because g-minor is the ‘relative minor’ of B-flat. When the drum beat kicks in F-major seems to win out, as a clear F chords with a root F bass note is heard. We also hear a d-minor (which is the relative minor of F-major) and the melody contains a lot of Fs and Cs which are the ‘tonic’ and ‘dominant’ (two of the 3 most important notes) of F-major. That said, the melody also throws things off with its D-F-A suggestion of D-minor (but this also could be F-major with an added 6^th) and over the B-flat bass alludes to a rich B-flat-major-7^th chord. As the music continues there are a number of dissonances and diminished chords. The track ends with a single bass F note with all other instruments dropping out. However with a last vocal figure of F-D-A-G this offers no real conclusion to anything I’ve said above. I may have lost some here but, don’t worry, it actually doesn’t really matter. I’m actually just saying that, to my ear, the track is harmonically interesting. It’s not as simple and straightforward as your average pop song in which you can usually identify a ‘key’ quite straightforwardly and the harmony tends to be made up largely of chords I, IV and V of that key, and the melody won’t throw off any sense of this. The lyrics depict a virulent relationship seemingly consumed by addiction, vices and destructive behaviours. It is strong and interesting opener. That said, at this point, I’m not bowled over. I'd say I am interested but not excited.

However, as the ‘Caesar on a TV Screen’ progresses, my ears do prick up. Some of the points of interest in the 1^st track are present but it is the structure that meant it was receiving my undivided attention even on the 1^st listen. I think the best way to describe it is as follows. It’s like the band had written 4 relatively different tracks, were told they could only use 1, weren’t sure about which one to go with, so took the verse of one, the bridge of another, the chorus of the next etc., and spliced them together. The lyric is one narrative and the transitions are not abrupt, so its not disjointed. Its masterfully performed.  The structure is A-B-C-D-A-B-C/D (the 2^nd time through the C-section (Hah!) incorporates elements of the D-section, hence C/D).

‘Feminine Urge’ arguably has the strongest melody so far and I can definitely hear the David Bowie influence coming through here. The drum beat sounds a lot like Ashes to Ashes. You’ll have to excuse my indulgence here..... as a huge Madness fan (who knew? Lol) I have to mention that the Ashes to Ashes drum beat is actually, by Bowies own admission, failed plagiarism of the drum beat in ‘My Girl’! I say “failed plagiarism” because the drummer apparently couldn’t seem to replicate the beat exactly, so in the end Bowie settled for what the drummer was incorrectly doing. So..... there you go.

‘On Your Side’ seems a more genuinely sentimental song than..... well.... ANY other on the album. It is a calmer song with a strong melody. That said, something more sinister catches my ear. Lurking in the background is a distant noise (I think it’s made by a guitar) that’s sounds like a distant cry of pain. You can hear it more clearly during a pause in the song and it then becomes the premise of a musical interlude at the end of the track. I love a musical (or other type of) interlude. It reminds me of the kind of thing you’d regularly find on a 1970s progressive rock album, although much much shorter. There are some synth sounds and I detect voices including short gasps. It makes me wonder if the “I’ll love you and be with you no matter what” sentiment of the lyric is under-laid with ‘even if its awful and destroys us both’. It gives way to a sudden crescendo that ends abruptly like when you hear an extended reverse-cymbal sound in a dance track. It’s kind of thing I’ve heard many times before but, I have to confess, I like it every time.

This leads us to a part of the album I will refer to as ‘the 5-track run’ and I’m going to make a really bold statement. Its a statement that I will be interested to see if my future self, say 10 years from now, agrees with. I say it with some sense of trepidation but I don’t say it lightly. This ‘5-track run’ (which, in case you’re wondering, is not cryptic, I

do just mean “The next 5 tracks”) is one of the very best I’ve ever heard in the history of pop/rock!

Yes. Quite a claim I know. During this 5 track run I am, indeed, ‘blown away’, ‘bowled over’, ‘wow-ed’ or however else you want to put it. It begins with ‘Beautiful Boy’, which opens with a solo flute playing a melody based on a C-minor arpeggio decorated with little chromaticism, that becomes the basis for vocal melody. Although simple, the track departs from your basic song structure. Its like an 8 line poem (with 2 lines of melody, the 1^st for the 1^st 4-line stanza and the second for the next) that seems to deal with gender inequality, through the eyes of a young person or even child. The female protagonist admits ‘envy’. The 8 line poem gives way to a section of sparse piano chords (E-flat, C-minor, G-minor, B-flat) in the upper-register which sets up the second half of the track. This features 2 simple lines “beautiful boy” and “I wish I could be a beautiful boy”. Instruments and vocals are gradually added with phenomenal vocals, harmonies and melodic figures. The crescendo builds before halting for one final tranquil exclamation of “I wish I could be a beautiful boy” with just a solo vocal and guitar. The guitar drops out before completing the phrase leaving the vocal alone and left stranded on the dominant note B-flat (rather than closing with a perfect cadence or tonic note of E-flat). The lyric delves slightly deeper than a straightforward  message of gender inequality. Even the boy still has to be ‘beautiful’. The whole thing is intensely moving and there’s no doubt this is my favourite track on the album.

‘Gjuha’ feels like an ‘interlude’ itself. It apparently stems from one of the band feeling guilty at their unfamiliarity with their families Albanian language. There’s an ‘medieval’ musical sound to it although I couldn't tell you if the scales and harmonies used are authentic in that sense. My knowledge on that has faded over the years. There also seems to be a church organ and incredible choir-like vocals that suggest something religious, which would also loosely fit the ‘medieval’ theme I’m suggesting, as music was more-or-less used solely for that purpose back then. The sound is incredible and the vocals hit some overwhelmingly high notes at one point. The final chord does a similar crescendo leading to an abrupt ending very similar to the one in ‘On Your Side’. This one immediately reminded me of ‘A Day In The Life’ by the Beatles. Actually, its not that. Those of you familiar with the album “Love” (2006), a reimagining of the Beatles works by mixing up a number of the original master tapes, will have heard the final 3-piano chord of ‘A Day In The Life’ played backwards a few minutes into the record so that it fades IN.

The abrupt end of this chord gives way to ‘Sinner’, my second favourite track in the album. Funnily enough, it’s probably the simplest track and least ‘art-rocky’ but is perfectly delivered and proves the band can do ‘good old rock ‘n’ roll’ if necessary. There’s only really 2 chords, G & C, and has all the common elements of rock I.e., the drums, a thudding bass riff, strong solo electric guitar phrases, repeated and emphasised uses of the flattened 7^th and ‘blues note’ (a flattened 3^rd that clashes against the major 3^rd being used in the current chord (also sometimes referred to as sharpened/augmented 9^th or flattened 10^th) and a lyric about love/sex. Actually the lyric here is kind of anti-love/sex. It examines the often difficult negotiation between a close platonic relationship and one of a sexual nature. “I wish I knew you, back when we both were small”, and “before it felt like a sin”. Interesting use of the word ‘sin’. In fact, with this song, the indulgent academic music analyst of my Masters' years re-surfaced. It was always my favourite part of my theses. I could make up my very own meaning to any music so long as I could demonstrate some kind of logic to my thinking and present the results convincingly enough. I think I actually re-wrote many pop songs without doing anything more than just stating crap about them. As the reader you’d then subsequently be listening to exactly the same recording of exactly the same track but you’d have all my musings in your head and it will have changed the way you're listening to it. Brilliant. I felt so powerful (insert evil laugh)! I can’t really do that here, I’d need 5k words minimum and lots of music notational illustrations. But, I hope you’ll allow me some indulgence to share a summary of what my nonsense thesis would be. Basically the G chord is the ‘grounding’. However, it is the singer’s present grounding as an adult, so it is shroud with complications including this feeling of ‘sin’. C is a different platform that expresses a longing for that lost innocent time of the past/childhood. The opening begins on the G ‘grounding’ but shifts to the C ‘longing for past innocence’ immediate following the line “back when we both were small”. The word ‘small’ referring to childhood propels us to the C ‘innocent’ territory. Of course, that’s the past and we can’t stay there, as the singer realises and states “but I have gotten too tall”. The word ‘tall’, referring to sinful adulthood, propels us back to the present: G. Almost all the melodic phrases over the C chord end with the lyric “before it felt like a sin” before landing back on the G chord (the current/sinful ‘grounding’...... hey, G is for Grounding. My own genius astounds me). The superb guitar solo phrases seem to back this notion. They use those tense blusey flatted 3^rds and 7^ths I was talking about. There are 2 short phrases that are almost identical apart from the last note of each. The first time, it’s the flattened 7^th (F) and the second time it’s a semitone lower, the 6^th note of the G scale, E. This note is interesting as it is not a ‘blues note’ nor does it belong to the G-chord triad (which is G-B-D). However, the note sustains into the next chord of C. It DOES belong to the C triad (C-E-G). So, this was what we call an ‘anticipation’ where a note enters the music as a ‘dissonance’ before its harmonic friends all come to join it (thus ‘resolving’ the dissonance). Its like that note is the ‘longing’ that pulls the music from the ‘sinful’ G to the ‘innocent’ C. It doesn’t last long though, because we hear “before it felt like a sin” and we are back on the sinful G. As the music is G – C – G – C all the way through we are continually pivoted between the ‘innocent’ and ‘sinful’ grounds. The end of the track not only leaves us with no conclusion but upsets the matter further. A final melodic phrase of G-A-B-F-E ends with that F and anticipatory E of the guitar solos and the harmony lands on a C chord. This is the ‘innocent’ ground!! We’ve concluded in this lovely innocent place, no? Nope. All the way through the track the words “felt like a sin” are sung using a downward scale of E-D-C-B, which is a third above the implied root harmony that gets us from the C chord back to the G chord; so C-B-A-G. After landing on the final C chord there is one final melodic phrase played by the bass. It is similar to that C-B-A-G that gets us from the C-chord back to the ‘grounding but sinful’ G-chord..... but not quite. Instead of walking step by step down the G scale, C-B-A-G, it walks down using the chromatic scale, semitone by semitone, C-B-Bb-A. It ends there. So it feels like we landed conclusively on the ‘innocent’ (the last chord is C) but, with this last little melodic bass figure, something tries to escape back to the home (but sinful) ground......... but takes a wrong turn and doesn’t make it...... forever stuck from arms reach of both those areas but not quite at either. Indeed, life and relationships are confusing!!

‘My Lady of Mercy’ fooled me on first listen. It begins somewhat more light and upbeat than any of its predecessors. There’s a fun bouncy melody, little drum fills, and handclaps. I was thinking ‘The Bangles’. In fact, I was even thinking ‘a band version of Bananarama’. I definitely thought the word ‘twee’ and assumed the quality was taking a bit of a dive compared to the last few tracks or so. However, after a couple of renditions of a verse, the music halts, the singer let’s out a guttural ‘ahh’ and the timbre and tempo totally change to a slow, dark, grungy (although with use of a synth-orchestral backdrop rather than noisy low-register guitar power chords alone) and loud affair with choir-like vocals. I had been duped, and should have known better given the earlier tracks. The happy-clappy sections are the narrator delightfully presenting their admiration for someone, although with a strange alluding to religious leanings: “I’ll see you on Sunday” and “under your crucifix”. She declares “I want to make them sing........” before letting out the ‘ah’ and transforming to the slower section where it feels as if this ‘admiration’ has indeed turned to ‘worship’: “oh, rest your feet on me, my Lady of Mercy”. Its beautifully disturbing. This track is definitely a contender for best track on the album.

‘Portrait of a Dead Girl’ follows. Although I feel we are slipping slightly from the peak of the album, it is a great track, displays another dimension to band, and has a musical motif that links with the previous track. It is a 4-3-1-flattened 7^th run that can be heard in the vocal line of the darker section of ‘Lady of Mercy’. The title and lyric are intriguing and feature my favourite line of the whole album: “I wished you had given me the curtesy of ripping out my throat”. This brings us to the end of my 5-track run.

‘Nothing Matters’ was a top 20 single and is a very distinct track, largely because of its lyric which exclaims “I will fuck you like nothing matters”. Here, the group manage to brilliantly deliver a powerful feminist message without even mentioning feminism. It’s the simple use of the word ‘fuck’ an arguably ‘coarse’ synonym for sexual intercourse. There’s multi-vocals here and ‘fuck’ is emphasised with hard F and hard K. It’s clever and cannot go unnoticed - and there lies the feminism. The Last Dinner Party make us take a look at ourselves and question why we even find this notable. I feel guilty myself and have had to have a think. I was recently listening to the recent top ten single by Kanye West and others called ‘Carnival’. Its loaded with bad language and really crude references to sexual acts.............. and it barely registered in my head. As soon as the ladies used the word ‘fuck’ my brain was, like, ‘.....pardon?’. Its an admission I feel ashamed about but I think it’s important here. I believe this is calculated not just by the use and emphasis of the word but because the melody is very plain compared to much of the rest of the album and even the verses of this song. It is simply 2 notes, a tone apart – notes I and II of the scale being used. A more shapely melody would distract away from the potency of the lyric and its stark language. Its one of those moments that is simple but borderline  genius. Aside from this, I applaud the lyric anyway. Decades ago, I was already sick of sex being referred to as a beautiful act of ‘love-making’ in pop music. I find it sickening, unreal, and actually socially irresponsible given pop-music’s largely young audience. Not all will agree, and some will think the exact opposite. That’s just my position on the matter.

As an aside note, for those of you who haven’t heard Chloe's version (if you don’t know Chloe, firstly why not?, secondly, no excuse anymore) follow this link. https://youtu.be/zOLUBN4YJC0?si=7svV32A3j6IgXHOd  Her somewhat stripped back version takes all these elements and many I’ve not discussed here and presents them even more  poignantly. This track has clearly struck a chord with many as a string of female artists have been performing this one lately.

‘Mirror’ is a slow subtle but by no means weak end to the album. There is what sounds like a timpani that adds a dark colour to the depressing sound of the track. Rather than a conclusion, the lyric feels the we look in the mirror, see an exact replica of ourselves, its us, yet we understand nothing about what we are looking at. There’s despair -  “When I drown, will I get very far?”. I hate happy endings so this all suits me to the ground.

This brings us to a piano/orchestral ‘outro’ that is tagged on to the end and I don’t feel really adds anything to the album at all. It’s slightly redeemed in my mind by a final discordant crescendo and abrupt end (aside from the concert hall-like echo). This completes a trio of abrupt ending crescendos. I do quite like that, but I probably would have preferred the end of ‘Mirror’ to be the very end. Again, while a like the ‘album as art form’ I feel the album has this anyway without the ‘Prelude and Epilogue’.

Since writing this, my thoughts have evolved. Firstly, I’ve read more than one critic refer to the ‘intro-outro’ idea as ‘deliberately pretentious’ here. I’m not totally convinced that is the intention but, if so, I can go with that. I’m all for ‘sending things up’. Also, I have written before about the album as an art-form being lost. With that in mind, I’m quite glad the Last Dinner Party have done this, whatever I think of it in the context of rock/pop album history. Overall, I remain unsure about this aspect of the album but maybe I’m coming round to it.

It’s a outstanding album and exceeds any expectation I had when I started this ‘new music listening’ project of mine..... by miles. I do fear a little for The Last Dinner Party. The album a tough act to follow. Expectations of a follow-up album, including my own, will be exceptionally high. The album will NEED to be relatively soon (I’d say 1-2 years after the 1^st one MAX) or the buzz will have died and sadly no one will bother very much however good it is. The album MUST be as good as, or better than, this one. Pop music history is littered with acts who’ve had incredible debuts and either never quite matched it, or have matched it but everyone lost interest after a weak follow-up to the debut. I feel like there’s a lot of pressure here. My gut feeling is they WILL smash it. But only time will tell .

I’m really enjoying this ‘Getting More Ofay With New Music Again’ project. (Yea I’ve not decided on an official name for it yet, hence the many names scattered throughout this review). The Last Dinner Party have bowled me over. They’ve made me much less cynical...... although I am still going to be very surprised if experience a repeat of this. Who knows, maybe one day, you’ll see a review from me of a new album that has only JUST been released that same week. Until then.....

9/10

Stand Out Tracks:

·         Caesar On A TV Screen

·         Beautiful Boy

·         Sinner

·         My Lady Of Mercy

Marking key (in a nutshell)

10 – Perfect (only 3 albums in history)

9 – Basically 10/10 (I just don’t quite view them in the same way as the 3 albums)

8 – Outstanding (possible nit-picking criticisms)

7 – Brilliant

6 – Good

5 – Average

4 – Has potential but below average

3 – Some good points but not very good overall

2 – Poor (possibly a few good points)

1 – Abysmal