Finding current or contemporary good quality pop music that delivers is difficult to find among the hype and the marketing system that puts one in separate worlds. Even if a new band has the powerhouse of Island Records behind it, I can still find an album streaming online, but it is more difficult to find with respect to purchasing a CD or vinyl version of the album by the new band The Last Dinner Party.
This is music designed to be massive, but of course, there are so many levels of treachery in the music business to make a band like The Last Dinner Party struggle to succeed to make their maximum best. But I feel the wind is on their side, and if they sail on the merits of their fascinating debut album, Prelude to Ecstasy, I don’t think they will fail. I have always been attracted to artifice in pop music, and The Last Dinner Party almost feels like it came out of pure air or perhaps merged from the dark shadows in a dark room. What I like about pop from the past is that a lot of music came from someone’s imagination and is partly curated by a manager/record label and the artists themselves. With that thought in mind, I think The Last Dinner Party’s talent is within the band. I sense a strong us vs. the world, which is a proper stance for a group or artist.
Any artist/band that starts off their album with an orchestrated overture as an intro to what one will hear shortly is not only wonderfully egotistical but also reminds me of the band ABC in how they presented their aural landscape at the time. The listener is placed in the role of an observer as the band presents its narrative in a distant manner because you are aware of being part of the audience—an old-fashioned technique by Bertolt Brecht but an even older theory by Denis Diderot regarding the fourth wall in the theater.
The Last Dinner Party’s music is grand, sweeping, and bigger than life but full of little emotional moments that bring things back to a human scale. My favorite song on this album is Caesar on a TV Screen, which, even by the title itself, is really great. The song deals with gender issues and positions oneself into a magnificent role. A TV screen is small and useable, and having a large presence stuck inside a normal-sized TV set is visually a nice set piece, but it also pulls a strong emotional sensibility. I have so far listened to this album three times. The music didn’t make an impression on me the first time, but there was something lyrical that kept bringing me back to the fold. Second run through I caught the charm, but by the third listening I found interesting aspects of their overall sound and vision. Also noted is the producer James Ford, who also sprinkled magic on the Arctic Monkeys album, especially on their last album, The Car, which I think has much to do with the Last Dinner Party’s recorded sound. It's an impressive debut album.