| Artist | The Last Dinner Party |
| Venue | O2 City Hall, Newcastle |
| Date | 23 September 2024 |
| Opener | Prelude to Ecstasy then Burn Alive |
| Closer | Nothing Matters |
| Highlight | Second Best |
| Undertone rating | 3/5 |
Five piece indie rockers The Last Dinner Party were Britain’s most talked-about band during their meteoric rise last winter. The strength of the songwriting remains undeniable, but frontwoman Abigail Morris gave a noncommittal performance on a faintly disappointing Monday night in Newcastle.
It was a sad sight outside Newcastle’s old City Hall as the daylight faded on this grey Monday afternoon: about 50 of the Last Dinner Party’s most devoted fans, several dressed in immaculate regal frocks and bodices inspired by the band’s own distinctive Regency era dress sense, all slowly wilting in the late-September drizzle. It’s not unusual to spot music fans wiling away the afternoon beneath these colonnaded steps, but these patient disciples seemed more numerous than the sort you’d get for, say, Easy Life. Indeed, just 18 short months since releasing their very first song, the Last Dinner Party have a well-established cult following, owing to their eye-catching fashion sense, captivating frontwoman Abigail Morris and, most importantly, the consistent quality of their songs – four perfect singles down, it seemed like they couldn’t put a foot wrong.
It’s a lightning quick leap to stardom only bested by Chappell Roan in the US (although both artists’ careers long predate their first widely released singles) and, like Roan, Morris and her bandmates seem to have taken their dramatic change in circumstances in their stride. She sauntered onto the City Hall stage to the sound of The Last Dinner Party’s very own classical overture, Prelude to Ecstasy, flamboyantly flicking back her jet black hair before diving into the theatrical first verse of Burn Alive. The last time I saw her, during a scant 45-minute acoustic performance in Leeds’ Brudenell Social Club last February, the vibe was unstated singalong with friends. Tonight Morris was a different person: squarely in entertainer mode, leaning into her sultry side in a skimpy two piece that was a departure from her typically conversative Edwardian-era dress and corset look. Here was the panache that I had wrongly expected on that night in February: Aurora Nishevci cracking out the lightning-white keytar as early as song two, guitarist Emily Roberts (pixie-like with black wings attached to her back) digging into solo after solo, Morris slinking from one side of the stage to the other, singling out audience members with an elegantly curved finger like a femme fatale selecting her next victim. “When I was a child, I never felt like a child / I felt like an emperor!” Morris belted, fists to the air, exemplifying her band’s appeal: modern feminism for girls who’d rather stay at home and read classics than dance to Charli xcx at the club.
And yet, something about this performance’s opening 30 minutes felt off. The audience never seemed fully engaged and, like the band, had not committed to the old school fashion nearly as much as me and tonight’s companion Isaac (themself immaculately dressed) had expected. The horns and strings that adorn many of the band’s finest numbers, like on cinematic Caesar on a TV Screen, were understandably absent, but the band offered little to plug the gap, Roberts’ soaring guitar solos sounding so at odds with her static stage presence that at times it felt like she was just half-heartedly miming to a backing track.
Indeed, this was a grey old Monday night in Newcastle, and TLDP’s performance felt like it. Morris gesticulated and posed for the crowd as if out of habit – expressive, yes, but a far cry from her full bombast displayed at numerous big festival stages this summer, not least Glastonbury and a sweaty night in Paris. Vocally, Morris was also iffy, allowing her weak vocals to get swallowed up by the raucous guitars on an otherwise delightful cover of Blondie’s Call Me. The biggest test of Morris’ vocals came with the strikingly exposed held note at the start of Beautiful Boy‘s climax, where her singing wobbled perilously close to disaster. An unnecessary a cappella break on Mirror, perhaps their debut album’s most forgettable track, had the crowd holding their breath – not because of Morris’ stunning vocal control, but the very real risk of her vocals going horribly awry.
Even on a bad day, though, TLDP are hardly a mediocre rock band. Several songs are compositional gems, full of unpredictable twists and turns and with lyrics stuffed with well-read influences from classical poetry and feminist philosophy. Sinner was the first track to at last get the crowd in the dress circle on their feet, preceded by a moving but all too brief rendition of Gjuha, a tribute to Nishevci’s Albanian heritage with crisp, operatic group vocals. Second Best was the pick of the unreleased material, with its refreshingly straightforward hook and a fun spot of amateur dramatics when Morris feigned missing her cue, only to return to centre stage and belt her way into a final, rapturous chorus. My Lady of Mercy, the album’s nastiest hard rock firecracker, was rightly saved for the business end of the set list, but received a muted reception in Newcastle. On a better night for the band, a bridge with this much pent-up rage and suspense should have torn the roof off. Instead, it sounded like just another day at the office for Morris.
With all the big bookings and extensive media coverage TLDP are getting these days, it’s easy to forget they are still only one album deep into their careers, and a second album promises to develop their currently slim set list. Newcastle’s performance was fleshed out by Lizzie Mayland’s rendition of Catherine Howe’s vaporous ballad Up North, which was pretty if somewhat bland, and mostly served to demonstrate that Mayland was, for tonight at least, a better vocalist than Morris. The slim discography also meant every corner of Prelude to Ecstasy – a good album but not a perfect one – had to be performed, and Mirror in particular seems likely to be cut from the set list as soon as they get the chance. By Your Side was played so slowly it became a funereal dirge stripped of the exquisite passion of the original, and one began to wander whether the band really were getting desperate to fill out the full 75-minute slot, which in fairness they managed.
It was telling that TLDP were so stuck in the grim routine of nightly performances – give the fans what they want, then move on to the next city – that they persisted with the usual encore routine despite a largely disinterested audience. Nothing Matters, the masterful debut single that single-handedly propelled these five uni students to stardom, inevitably followed, but even here the ecstasy felt subdued. It should have been a confetti-strewn victory lap of a song, but instead it sounded more like a semi-successful attempt to relocate the spark that set off all the fervour around the band in late 2022.
Perhaps this Monday night fixture was never due to be one of their finest performances – Morris and her colleagues are, after all, still somewhat inexperienced touring artists, even if the quality of their songs and the size of their fanbase suggest otherwise – and an exhausting touring schedule awaits after this, night four of a 22-date tour. Nonetheless, on returning to those dank Newcastle streets at 10.30pm, I couldn’t help but feel a little put out by it all. Without a doubt, this was a good gig, but it could have been so, so much better.
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