“Curiouser and curiouser” says Alice during her adventures in Wonderland as she starts to grow tall, the physical effects of eating some magic cake after falling down a rabbit hole. From the dramatic intro music which could soundtrack a costume drama or pre-empt the arrival of a Sith Lord, the sold-out crowd at tonight’s gig share in Alice’s point of view as The Last Dinner Party lay out the delights of their musical banquet for all to feast on.
With white petticoat dresses or derivations of de rigeur for the majority of the six-piece, as the lights turn blue during opening track ‘Burn Alive’, they appear like Gothic apparitions prophesying what’s to come. Vocalist Abigail Morris swoops around the stage pointing and playing with the crowd in a flurry of Kate Bush style histrionics that embellishes ‘The Feminine Urge’. Swapping lead guitar for flute, Emily Roberts charms, nymph like, the opening for an ethereal ‘Beautiful Boy’ that transitions from Prog to something akin to musical theatre. Like a pristine silent assassin she stands unassumingly behind the ebullient Morris, who works herself up into a sweat early on in the show. Then when called upon she delivers the killer blows: the sinewy guitar line in latest single ‘Sinner’, where “Night At The Opera” era Queen meets Sparks or the 70’s born rock riff from the heart of ‘Nothing Matters’, their debut single that unsurprisingly gets the biggest crowd reaction of the night, exerting an irresistible gravitational pull, the song itself their very own moonshot.
With Morris announcing before ‘My Lady Of Mercy’ that “it can get a little weird”, the expectancy is for something discordant, adjunct, off-centre, bizarre. Instead, the cohesive jam that is created with Aurora Nischevci stepping back from the keyboard and picking up a keytar and the guitar duelling between bassist Georgia Davies and guitarist Lizzie Maylan proves that they are a band that really can do things their own way. “Dear, dear! How queer everything is to-day! And yesterday things went on just as usual. I wonder if I’ve been changed in the night?” Even more so are we left with Alice’s ponderances, as we emerge from a rabbit hole where The Last Dinner Party have entertained with a performance that alters perceptions.
Check out our interview with The Last Dinner Party here.