The Last Dinner Party on Playing Live Shows Before Releasing Music, Their New Album, Their Unique Style and More

The Last Dinner Party chats with host Lisa Worden about choosing to play live shows before releasing music, their upcoming album, their unique style and more

Episode Transcript

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If you're listening to she is thevoice the female alternative artists that you need

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to know. Here's your host,Police Awarded All ninety eight seven. Li's
new alternative you're listening to, sheis the voice And I am thrilled,
be on thrilled to have Abigail andAurora from the Last Dinner Party with us
tonight. Hello. Lots to talkabout tonight, and we're going to touch

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on several things, one of thembeing that you are playing our Alter Ego
show in January, which I'm soexcited about. Yeah, it's going to
be crazy. It'll be like allcrazy the pictures. Yeah, it's huge.
We didn't really realize what it wasand then we googled it and it
was, oh my gosh, somany. Well, no, it's it's
going to be really fun. You'replaying alongside Paramour, the Black Keys,

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the nineteen seventy five Bush, Someforty one Yellow Card, Lovely the Band.
It's going to be a really greatnight. And we try to curate
the show to represent all different genresand styles of alternative music and we're happy
to have you on there. Thankyou for everyone listening. You are probably
a relatively new artist to our audience, So I like to kind of give

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a little history to the listeners.Man, your career has exploded really fast.
I love how you made performing livesuch a priority and then you recorded
music, and that doesn't happen thatway a lot. Usually bands will make
songs in a studio or you know, they'll write with people and they get

(01:33):
the music done and then they're like, oh shit, I got to learn
how to play live, and youkind of did it the reverse ways.
So I wanted to talk about thatwith you. Yeah, I mean it
was a very conscious decision to dothat. I think it was from the
very start we said, you know, out loud, we want to play
live for as long as possible.We want to be a live band for
many reasons, I think, butthe biggest one being that's what we wanted,

(01:53):
Like that's the most fun for us, is to be playing live instead
of you know, doing stuff ina studio and then putting out. And
I think also we were just Ijust think it's a better way at the
moment of doing it, because insteadof recording something then putting it out and
then kind of waiting for people tocome to you and then playing a show

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and kind of you know, notreally knowing what to do. You've been
doing it for so long that youknow you can build up an audience quite
naturally from live and I think that'swhat people really want these days. I
think people were missing it a lotafter the pandemic, and we were I
absolutely love that. I mean,for me, I'm a huge music fan
to begin with, but a liveperformance for me is so important. And

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you know, there's artists I love, and when there's the music, I
love, the artist I love,but then I see them live and they
blow me away. That's what I'mlike. Okay, I'm man, you
know you got me now. It'ssuch an important part of an artist's career.
We are here with Abigail and Aurorafrom the Last Dinner Party, and
what we do on She is theVoices. Every Friday night we kind of

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honor female musicians and artists in alternativemusic. It's a dedicated space. It's
one hour where we play you know, non binary artists, female artists,
gay, queer, whatever it is. I just really wanted to have a
place because a lot of radio playlistsare taken up by male musicians, which
is fine, by the way,totally cool with that I just like to

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shine a light on it new musiciansas well as the kind of trailblazing female
musicians in the scene. Who aresome of your favorite artists and they don't
need to be female necessarily are Whoare some artists that influenced you. I'm
loving Mitski at the moment, likethe new album. I agree. Incredible

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musician, so varied. I thinkan inspiration musically for what we do a
bit as well. Yeah, Idon't know if I've been listening to Yeah
we're playing Yeah, We're playing hersong mind Oh yeah, so beautiful.

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She never misses yep. Big fanof Minski. I've read that Bowie is
an influence huge, Yeah, LikeI think it just apart from his music,
which is massively influential, also hishis approach to music and his approach
to art in general, I thinkis really refreshing and exciting, and I

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think we want to apply it toour approach and any foster art because it's
sort of he comes at things froma really open minded, curious, eager
to learn, eager to expand perspective, which is why he changed so many
times and pulled it off every time, because he was doing it for himself
every time. He was really earnestas an artist instead of you know,

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following trends or anything, takes risks, like he does weird things. Yeah,
because exactly. Yeah, and thenyeah, yeah he's a huge and
I think you hit it on thenail. He's an artist's most singer.
Yeah, yeah, I think,yeah, that's what we're interested in doing
music, but thinking about visuals andbeing interested in film music, like there's

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a whole world of media that wedon't want to be well. And that
was one thing I was going tosay, is it seems like you all
have a very clear vision for yourart, so what you want the music
to sound like, but also visually, you know, I love I love
the style. You know. Somethings that came to mind were, you

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know, the period pieces and thetutors and Bridgerton and and then I don't
know if anyone has ever said it, but it did remind me a bit
of the first panic at the Discoalbum and that a fever, a fever
you can't spat out. I don'tknow if you've seen the visuals or the
yeah no, it's take a look, take a look visually, but it

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did remind me not musically, it'smore of the visuals. I guess you
think the theatrics is like a bigthing for us. Yes, yes,
so I love that there is avision when it comes to the art.
I read that you came with themood board for the video. Yeah for
nothing matters. Was like, wait, don't you want usually we do that?

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You're like, no, we wantto do it. I mean it
was for the whole concept of aband of the band. It wasn't even
like it was like we came infor the first meeting with the creative team
of Island with like a sixty fourpage manifesto. Movie boy, but yeah,
but because we it was so importantto us from the very Again,
this is another thing that was pannedfrom the beginning, is that fifty percent

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of what we are as a bandwill be what we look like, because
that's you know, interesting and importantand engaging and it's you know, part
of the world building. So wehave very heavy handed involvement with how we
look with everything. We don't haveanyone like a liberating thing to do for
yourself as well to like, Idon't know, be creative in that aspect

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and make the effort. It's justI don't know. I found it because
I was teaching piano before and Ijust dressed as a teacher and there were
so many outfits. I was like, I'm never gonna wear this, and
enjoying this band, I was like, ah, yes, all the things
I never thought I was gonna wear, I'm just gonna do it now because
it's like it's opened, yeah,a whole world, and that's kind of

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what we want the people who cometo the shows as well, to feel
like you've got this space, youcan be creative if you want to be.
Yes, well, I've heard thatsometimes you encourage the fans to dress
up like a certain theme. That'sso fun. Yeah, it is fun.
I think it's because it's I feellike what a lot of what this
project is is just us kind oflike video game style, creating our dream

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band. Because for me, ifif if I was to design like the
perfect band, it would be aband where if I went to see them,
I knew that I could dress upand that everyone else would be dressing
up. It would be a sortof thing because I like, for a
while, especially in the London scene, that kind of like went away and
people weren't doing that. It wasvery kind of T shirt and jeans and
like quite serious. And I thinkalways the most fun gigs that I went

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to when I was a teenager inLondon were the ones where, you know,
for example, if you see peoplequeuing outside, we see people walking
around, you're like, oh,I know they're going to a you know,
so and so good because the waythey dressed. I think that's so
much fun. I agree that issuper fun. You just announced your album
is coming out February second, soexciting prelude to Ecstasy, So let's talk

(08:33):
about it. Tell us about thealbum. Yeah, it's kind of like
a mission statement. I feel like, of us so wanky. Honestly,
I ran your while and the wayyou described it was beautiful. I mean
it was my press. I didthat a collective of all of your experiences

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and influences, even referenced stirps fromdiaries. I mean it really just the
way you guys described this album,it was just so it felt very heartfelt
and meaningful. It's because we werespeaking about this in the car. The
fact that all of us come fromdifferent backgrounds and so coming together in this

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band, all of our collective experienceshas kind of contributed to the album,
and it's made it this kind ofdiverse, varied storytelling musically and with words.
Well, we're excited for it.There are four songs currently available to
hear. The one we've been playingNothing Matters on ninety eight seven. Why

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don't you speak about that song?Yeah, it's yeah, the first song
we released. It started life asa kind of quite a soft, sad
piano ballad, and then it quicklyevolved into this big, bombastic thing with
a trumpet, horn section and asolo. It's really nice actually that that's

(10:03):
the one that's gone kind of insanebecause it's sort of like, you know,
me being able to smuggle my pervertedagenda to the masses, and like
it's kind of interesting to see thatthat's what everyone loves to sing. It's
like, you know, it's sortof like this sort of filthy carnal joy
that everyone likes. I absolutely lovethe song. Thank you. Loved seeing

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you play it on Monday night atthe l Ray You're sold out show in
Los Angeles. Yeah, it wasso fun and we will see that again
at Alter Ego in January. Anotherone of your songs that's currently out that
I really love is Sinner Yeah,Sinner. I feel like maybe was the
first most collaborative song that we wrotetogether. Lizzie brought it to me at

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first with like a verse that's noton there anymore, but we'll make an
appearance in some acoustic sessions and yeah. Then we just works on it and
Emily added guitar lines and kind ofbedroom produced it before we went and recorded
it properly. It's the first onethat we started with a drum loop.

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So it's got this breakbeat chorus,and we wanted it to be dancing and
fun and to be about the chorus, be about the instruments, and like
the chor it just has like threewords. Before it felt like a sin.
It doesn't have a lot going onlyrically, but those are the most
important words, and I think that'swhat Lizzie. Lizzie has spoken about that,
like wanting to choose few words,but the right words for the impact

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exactly. We are here with theLast Dinner Party, Abigail and Aurora.
You just released a song on yourside just a few days ago, I
feel yeah, super recent. Yeah, the other we played a show the
other night in Philly and it wasthe first time that people sung along to
that one, which was really exciting. So yeah, it's so emotional whenever

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that happens. We're still not usedto being like, oh, you know
the words because it's it's superand new. I know that is awesome and it
seems like and you can tell me, Abigail, there's truth to this,
but it it said I read thatyou wrote it the day after you met
somebody let me let me accept thescene. So it was about an ex

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flame of mine and I'd known himfor a while. It was like a
one nice stand but we've been friendsfor a while, and then the it
was the first night that we slepttogether. I woke up in the middle
of the night and just wrote itin my phone notes, which is kind
of like psycho. But we thendated for a few months and it was
awful. It's very tragic, butgot so many Most of the songs on

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the album, I feel like,are about that relationship, but this one
in particular is about that. Butyeah, it came from I have like
the original notes still on my phone. I just woke up in a frenzy
and like wrote the chorus and thenit was a song with different verses,
and then it was kind of likea straight love song. Yeah, and
then I decided I didn't like theverses. We kind of scrapped it,

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and then after we broke up,I rewrote it with the new verses,
with the perspective of raceshipping over,and so it's sort of that contrasting with
the chorus when I was super likein love and infatuated with the then fallout
of that, it actually turned outto be a very sad relationship. One
of our favorite artists on this radiostation is Florence in the Machine. Yeah,

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same, We love it so much, and it just made so much
sense when you toured with her,because I do hear hints of Florence in
the music tell us about that tour. We love her. There was only
one show is a great show.I mean, people toured the summer with

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Laurence in the Machine. People likethat show that happening. People think that
we also opened for Nick Cave,and I read that I scratched out because
you were like, yeah, wewere on a festival and it like imagine
and even the Stones you were like, there were two other artists. Anyway,
it said toward the summer with Florencewrong, incorrect. We wish one

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day, how is that show amazing? Obviously have you seen her before before
you played? Georgia is like asuper fan, So that was like the
best day for her. That wasso fun. We met her that day
as well. That was so like, she is so lovely. She is
maybe the kindest, funniest I feellike massive role model as a musician,

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as a person to like make thateffort because I feel like she knows how
much it means to the support bandsfor you to come speak to us,
give us advice, watch us aswell, and like just because you can
see that she just has a lovefor music and I love for like going
to gigs and supporting artists And it'sso lovely. One day when so do

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I thank you so much for listeningto She is the Voice tonight. It's
been our pleasure to have Abigail andAurora from the Last Dinner Party with us,
and we honestly can't wait to seeyou again in January at our Alter
Ego show sold out at the HondaCenter. Thank you very much, thank

(15:18):
you, thank you, thank youso much for coming in and pleasure.
I'm so excited for you guys.Thank you. She is the Voice the
female musicians that are creating tomorrow sounds. He is the voice on ninety eight
seven LA's new alternative