It’s been a heck of a ride for The Last Dinner Party over the last couple of years. Generating enough word of mouth appetite and fizz to see them bubble up from the Brixton underground scene to the must see band of the year – without releasing a single – has attracted critics, cynics, detractors and petticoat wearing, Austen inspired fans in equal measure. With support slots for The Rolling Stones, Lana Del Ray and Florence and the Machine under their collective belts and festival season well and truly underway, we caught up with band members Abigail Morris (vocals), Georgia Davies (bass), Aurora Nischevci (keyboards) and Lizzie Maylan (guitar) before their gig at Birmingham’s Hare and Hounds to talk about the power of YouTube, taking lyrical advice from Courtney Love and preparing for the afterlife with Stephen Fry.
How’s the tour going so far?
Abigail – Great, we have definitely noticed a shift since the last two songs came out. Early on in the year we played in Ramsgate to about six people and then in the last month everything has been selling out and people in the front are singing along. It’s suddenly like wow! A very clear shift in audience which is really cool and overwhelming.
Where do you think the trajectory has come from playing those initial underground gigs to now?
Georgia – It was a slow burn at first getting to play our first gig to releasing a song and gradually drawing more and more people in through word of mouth and live shows. I think that word of mouth ethos has continued with friends telling their friends that they went to a weird show the other night. And you’ve got the digital side of it where people can stream the songs so the growth has been more exponential than it had been before.
Aurora – YouTube definitely helped. Lou Smith’s channel. He filmed the whole MOT show in London.
Abigail – That’s what got us noticed by our label and our manager. It all snowballed from that.
Any highlights of the tour so far?
Georgia – We are bang into festival season now so those have been pretty amazing. Glastonbury, it was our first time playing and attending, so it was pretty overwhelming.
Abigail – Favourite show we’ve ever done for me was Glastonbury
Aurora – We played Woodsies Stage at 11am. I quite liked the early start, it just freed up the day so we could run around and get drunk.
Floating on the high of nailing the set?
Lizzie – Yep, finish sobbing and then go grab a margarita!
You have supported some big artists most recently Lana Del Ray at Hyde Park. Did you get to meet her?
Abigail – No, apparently she is very shy and reclusive. British Summertime is a massive event so we weren’t going to run into her backstage.
Georgia – The whole backstage area is its own world so I didn’t get my hopes up for that one!
Unlike a certain Rolling Stone, did she give you a mention as one of her support acts?
Georgia – No, but she didn’t mention any of the other supports, so we were all in the same boat
Better to not mention than omit which is obviously a beef which will carry on?
Lizzie – For the rest of our careers.
Abigail – It’s really twisted!
You have supported the Arctic Monkeys as well. How was that?
Georgia – We ended up playing the slot before them at a festival in Spain.
Lizzie – Then we got to watch them play which was amazing!
Abigail – We saw the mirror ball backstage.
Florence and the Machine recently too. There’s a lot of Florence similarities in your music. How was it supporting her?
Georgia – That was a total dream come true.
Abigail – We did get to meet her. Before the show in Cork. We were having supper and her tour manager came and said “Flo would like to see you”. She was the most gracious and down to earth and kind. She gave us so much advice. One of the first times we have met someone who has been such a role model. Not only musically but personally as a mentor and a woman.
Georgia – Her journey has similarities to us in the music industry. I was so nervous to meet her because I have idolised her for so long since I was a little girl. She surpassed expectations.
Lizzie – She watched most of our show as well from the side of the stage. I didn’t notice as we were playing else I would have been sh**ing myself! She was dancing along.
A strong visual image in terms of clothes and fashion is integral to your style. Being labelled as a buzz band, do you wear it well?
Georgia – I think we have taken things like that in our stride. Being “hypey” or “buzzy” means that we have got something to prove to people.
Abigail – And I think we have been. One of the nicest things I’ve seen is comments or tweets where someone has said I wasn’t sure about them, I heard all the hype and then I saw them live and I realised they were good. That’s the biggest compliment when people see us live and we prove ourselves. It can be a curse to be called “buzzy” or “hypey” because that implies a one hit wonder, flash in the pan. We don’t want to be that so as soon as that label goes away the better.
Georgia – I think in time it will. We just want to become a band embedded in the scene.
You did have a bit of negative press to start off with, how did you deal with that?
Georgia – We knew that was going to happen. We were..alright if they are not criticising the music they are just criticising something that they have made up.
Lizzie – In real life everyone we interact with is just excited and happy for us and wants to see us succeed. So the criticism doesn’t actually mean anything.
Georgia – It was just one day on Twitter.
Do you think there is a problem in the music industry with female bands being inferior to male ones for the coveted festival headline slots?
Lizzie – Unfortunately I think it is just still the default. If you say band then most people think men. We are not a girl band, we are a band.
Georgia – I think it’s still difficult for female bands especially from alternative music to break in to the festival headliner territory.
Lizzie – Women musicians playing in the music world so much dominated by men is not an easy place to be. It’s hard so I feel very lucky to be in a band of women.
Abigail – We are part of a wider scene in London of majority female bands which includes Picture Parlour, New Eves rather than having a token woman singing or playing drums, wanting to be the norm. If a young girl thinks of a rock band, she doesn’t picture four men, she pictures four women
Lizzie – Or members of any gender, any mix.
You met Courtney Love once and she suggested alternative words for the F*** you in ‘Nothing Matters’. Can you tell us any of the options?
Abigail – It was “punch you”. (Putting on a Courtney Love voice) “It’s so cool, it’s dynamic”
Is she the most influential artist you have met so far?
Georgia – I think culturally, yes probably. Her influence and her as a character in the grand scene is so iconic with Hole being an all-female band of the 90’s. Her fashion and visual stuff is a huge influence on us. Such an icon. It was mental that she was in our dressing room. Our manager was “don’t look right now Georgia but Courtney Love is behind you”. I remember discovering Hole when I was a teenager and doing a ninety degree turn.
Abigail – L7, Babes In Toyland, the whole Riot Grrl stuff isn’t in the music necessarily that much but in the ethos and the attitude and in taking up space. This is what we are doing and we are going to be really good at it.
Abigail, you write a diary. Now you are in a band do you write a diary as a direct source for the lyrics? Has the motivation changed?
No, I’ve been writing music and keeping a diary at the same time since I was thirteen. It has always informed my lyric writing. I write in my diary, even though it is just for me and no one else ever reads it. I write in a florid, dramatic way and sometimes that will end up being straight lifted into the lyrics.
Do you find song writing an easy process as a band?
Abigail – We experiment with different ways of writing. Lizzie wrote ‘Sinner’. What was your process for that one?
Lizzie – Start at the piano…Me and Aurora predominantly wrote the bones of it and then everyone else put their own individual parts on and it grew quite organically into a much bigger song. When I started writing it I wrote an intro which transformed into the bridge.
What’s been the highlight of your career so far?
Abigail – The first show after the single came out at Camden Assembly, we all felt a very pinpointed moment during ‘Nothing Matters’ when everyone was singing the whole thing. We were meant to be recording that to release as a live version but it’s completely unusable as all you can hear is me just laughing and crying. It was the first time playing when it wasn’t just to our friends that knew the song.
Lizzie – With the tour as well we have had a lot of moments when we realise this is our full-time job, this is our life now. Having sangria and tapas in a bar in Bilbao.
Abigail – On a Tuesday!
Lizzie – How have we done this? And then going to play shows for loads of people and then there’s the Arctic Monkeys.
If you weren’t in a band what would be your job?
Georgia – My plan was always to do a PhD in English Literature and go into Academia. My whole life was anchoring to being an academic and then yeah…I joined a rock band.
Abigail – I didn’t have a Plan B. This is what I’ve wanted to do since I was a kid and I never wanted to do anything else. So if I didn’t do this I would just give up. No…I think I would be in A&R.
Lizzie – I was going to do a Masters in Glasgow in creative writing, so a writer.
Aurora – I was studying composition, teaching, anything musically related I was doing. So it would have been some random music thing, like this!
What do you do to chill out or unwind?
Lizzie – Eat tapas in Bilbao!
Abigail – I walk a lot. I listen to the soundtrack from Red Dead Redemption which is a cowboy movie and I’ll just walk around pretending I’m in a cowboy movie.
Georgia – I like going to other gigs in pubs and just like totally stepping back from having to soundcheck. I’ll go to a gig at The George Tavern, don’t know who the band are, not friends with anyone. Just go to a gig and see it happen.
Abigail – When we all met we used to go to gigs. One night we went to a gig at The George and it was so nice to just be there in the crowd and to not be playing.
Lizzie – No hobbies.
Abigail – She just powers down. Just meditating!
Who are your favourite bands at the moment?
Lizzie– Fontaines D.C. We saw them at Primavera after lockdown. They were so good
Abigail – Jockstrap. I didn’t like the early stuff but then their latest album is sensational. Georgia Ellery is like some kind of galaxy astro brain. And The New Eves, who we saw the other day. Female folk quartet. They play cello and there’s electric guitar and interpretive dance.
Who would be at the last dinner party?
Aurora – You want someone to provide entertainment
Lizzie – If it’s the last one I feel like I would like some philosophical preparation.
Abigail – Socrates.
Lizzie – More like Stephen Fry, preparing you for the next steps.
Abigail – And then he reads Harry Potter afterwards
Georgia – Oscar Wilde.
Abigail – Oscar Wilde kissing Stephen Fry! Zelda Fitzgerald would be quite fun. F Scott Fitzgerald’s wife who allegedly wrote The Great Gatsby. I think she would be quite interesting. Yep that’s our table.
What’s your favourite fruit and why?
Abigail – Lychee, it’s looks good and tastes amazing. It’s spiky on the outside and the actual fruit is like a pearl and it just tastes like no other fruit. The seed is really smooth. Yum..Lychee martini.
Lizzie – I like pears. I like to eat them top down.
Georgia – Big delicious mango. I like getting really carnal with them like an animal.