Let’s take a moment to give it up for The Last Dinner Party, the alleged ‘industry plants’ whose debut was so good that it near enough vindicated them entirely in one fell swoop. Looking back on Prelude To Ecstasy now, you notice an added wrinkle it brought to the whole tiresome discourse—how much does it really matter? It can matter in a case of galling, flagrant insincerity, but The Last Dinner Party were never like that. For a band with a private-school background among their ranks, luxe, feminine-coded classic-rock and baroque-pop is far easier to swallow than if they were cosplaying as punks. Even everyone’s favourite smoking gun, “they opened for The Rolling Stones before they’d released any music”, feels old hat now, when there’s tangible evidence of who The Last Dinner Party are and what they can do.
On top of that, this is a difficult sound to expect to perform inherently well, even in a post-Running–Up–That–Hill-on-Stranger-Things world. The mainstream quotient of Florence + The Machine’s audience will only take you so far; there has to be more going on. Obviously, The Last Dinner Party know that. It’s likely why From The Pyre has come so soon after its predecessor—the creative energy of Prelude To Ecstasy was just that fertile, potent and singleminded. And if there were still any lingering doubts that The Last Dinner Party do deserve their ever-expanding status, From The Pyre is hopefully going to be what quells them.
The demeanour on show is the first big indicator of whatever the opposite of a flash in the pan is. The cheat code of embracing Queen, Kate Bush, David Bowie et al only goes so far when there’s no additional application, which The Last Dinner Party have always brought. Fundamentally, From The Pyre is no different in its artistry than Prelude To Ecstasy was, except for the subtleties and reimaginings that definitely add up. Second Best might be the band’s most devout bit of Kate Bush worship to date thanks to Abigail Morris going hard on the vocal histrionics, though its instrumental homage to ‘70s glam-rock leaves it entirely as its own thing. Later on, Woman Is A Tree comes closer to folk-horror in its conflation of the divine feminine with the natural world, and coating it with howling backing harmonies.
What’s always struck most about The Last Dinner Party is their sophistication, though From The Pyre puts more effort into mapping onto their ideas instead of the other way around. It makes them feel more like a rock band, at the end of the day, rather than the prim, perfected visage that’s long been applied. Thus, it’s nice to have a single embody that as This Is The Killer Speaking does, all ragged edges and fronts of instability reaching a simultaneous head. Compare that to how Nothing Matters introduced The Last Dinner Party to the world, and while a chorus that roots itself with such zeal ultimately deems it the better song, you can’t build an entire career through neverending rehashes of your very first song.
From The Pyre, then, performs an exceptional balance between iteration and growth. You would never doubt this to come from The Last Dinner Party, not when so many of their hallmarks carry over. The production is basically faultless, as are the performances and the vibe of classicism that’s their inalienable bedrock. But there’s a lot that’s new, too, and the fact it’s so tightly integrated (almost to the point of being unrecognisable as truly ‘new’) is a testament to the headway that The Last Dinner Party have had picked up. The baritone guitar sawing across the back of Rifle is a tiny but brilliant addition, after its more full-force introduction earlier on with Count The Ways’ opening scorch. It doesn’t even have to go that far, though; so much as a tempo shift or rejigging of progression feels like a fresh new step here. It’s why the regality of I Hold Your Anger (combined with its more imperious vocal) appears so novel, as does the multi-layered shuffle of The Scythe that’s almost recreating a synthpop groove.
What speaks volumes to an eardrum-rupturing degree, however, is, despite From The Pyre clearly being a product of creative subsidy by an industry who’ve been nothing but kind to The Last Dinner Party since the beginning, it doesn’t feel like it. If it did, it’d either, a) have nowhere near the same richness and flavour, or b) be a blatant rehash of their proven success of a debut. Straying from the former has never been an issue; the latter, however, comes with some sizable implications. It bestows upon The Last Dinner Party the agency that they’d crumble without, and exercising it to such an extent as on From The Pyre is truly a wonderful sign. Bear in mind that there hasn’t even been two years between this album and the previous one, and yet there’s already marked evolution and reshaping without losing even the tiniest morsel of identity. Regardless of what industry plant accusations you still wish to level, The Last Dinner Party continue to rise above them like no one else. From: https://thesoundboardreviews.com/2025/10/20/album-review-the-last-dinner-party-from-the-pyre/
