The Last Dinner Party’s Anticipated Debut: Prelude to Ecstasy

By: Enya Xiang

When the women of The Last Dinner Party take the stage, they always look as if they have just stepped out of a Baroque portrait, in ribboned corsets, petticoats, and gowns with puffy sleeves and pearls. With their debut album, Prelude to Ecstasy, the all-female London glam-rock group invites you to a mischievous occasion.

Prelude to Ecstasy enchants with its operatic power ballads and orchestra-rock extravagance, juxtaposing maximalist instrumentals with whimsical vocals. The entire album is a drawn-out performance, filling the listener’s ear with mythological allusions and literary evocations. The Last Dinner Party tunes into its femininity and worships it, a plucky choice in the world of rock which does not often look kindly upon frills or fragility. Nonetheless, each song expresses a moment of strength, an intimate monologue of female anguish and dark sincerity. These five female rockers testify to the curse and gift of womanhood in their delirious, luscious engagement that is Prelude to Ecstasy.

You might do a double take when the album begins with its opening track, ‘Prelude to Ecstasy’. An orchestra plays a grand overture with lilting strings and brass as if preparing for an opera’s opening act. Suddenly, the following track ‘Burn Alive’ begins with pounding drums and violent strings welcoming the album’s protagonist and lead singer, Abigail Morris, who emerges in grief. She compares her anguish to burning at the stake (“Petrol, my perfume”) and confesses with biblical proportions (“I’d break off my rib to make another you”). This theatrical opening brings us right into the heat of female emotion, refusing to shy away from its intensity.

With the confidence of ancient poets, The Last Dinner Party uses allegories and allusions to reach striking emotional depths, reminiscent of ABBA’s theatrics and Kate Bush’s absurdism. The bittersweet ballad ‘The Feminine Urge’ uses mythological allusions to explore the unequal power of men over women. Morris projects with a lovely vibrato, “I am a dark red liver stretched out on the rocks”, evoking Prometheus doomed to eternal punishment. “How I wish the trees would swallow me”, she sighs, repeating the prayers of the nymph Daphne, escaping from Apollo. These poetic and literary references weave through the album and vindicate the experience of womanhood.

While The Last Dinner Party celebrates their womanhood, they are imprisoned by their pedestal. Deep down they envy men. In ‘Caesar on a TV Screen’, Morris dreams of being one of the greats, imagining herself as a man: “When I put on that suit, I don't have to stay mute”. A frantic flourish of an electric guitar spinning out of control ends the track and these desires revealed to be figments of her imagination. The track ‘Beautiful Boy’ similarly observes the freedom with which men move about their world. Morris craves the adventure, sighing, “He launches ships on which he sails to safety” and admits, “What I’m feeling isn’t lust, it’s envy”.

Even though they speak of sorrow, The Last Dinner Party is finding their sense of self. A love song to Joan of Arc, ‘My Lady of Mercy’ takes the perspective of a girl trying to discover herself in a repressive environment. “It’s about having feelings for women as a woman and coming to terms with that growing up in a very Catholic family and school”, Morris explains in an interview. A rebirth finally occurs in ‘Portrait of a Dead Girl’ as a fierce goodbye to the painful past. Morris seeks the kind of vengeance found in the Grimm brothers’ fairy tales: “I kissed your eyes and framed your teeth as you crawl back to the sea.” Yet, the song ends with a hymn-like outro as she pleads softly, “Give me the strength”, longing for something more.

Prelude to Ecstasy basks in sadness and its end feels like waking up from a dream. You are left wondering if this was all for show—whether The Last Dinner Party are women moving freely on the stage, in control of their fate, or if they are paper dolls sitting pretty. In the album cover, the band sit posed in a portrait, placed upon an embellished mantle. Are they matriarchs or muses? This intelligent and perceptive Prelude shows that even trapped women have loud minds, and they have much more to tell.