The Last Dinner Party received quite the critical backlash when they arrived amid much fanfare in 2023. Posh, precocious and theatrical, armed with lofty ideas that matched their station as four young women who had benefited from very expensive educations, the band encountered widespread suspicion that they were industry ‘plants’, or had somehow bought their way to instant recognition.
Happily, their debut album, Prelude To Ecstasy, proved sufficiently accomplished to repel these waves of hostility (strange how the success of privileged young women tends to attract far greater opprobrium than that of privileged young men). In any case, the excellence of the follow-up should settle the matter. Rougher around the edges than Prelude To Ecstasy, it is cheering to see that the band hasn’t been cowed into conformity. Instead, From the Pyre simply dials up the baroque histrionics to 11.
‘For the album’s artwork,’ they explain in the pre-release notes, ‘we imagine each song as its own character and story set within a travelling medieval mystery play, and ourselves as its cast.’ Well, OK! The lyrics are filled with cowboys, sailors, saints and sundry instruments of violence. ‘Here comes the Apocalypse, and I can’t get enough of it,’ singer Abigail Morris roars on the fantastically entertaining opener ‘Agnus Dei’ (the classical schooling clearly came in handy). ‘Inferno’ begins, ‘I’m Jesus Christ!’ Although From the Pyre continually dares the listener to dismiss its more esoteric indulgences as arty-farty nonsense, the songs hit the heart and the guts long before the head has a chance to resist.
The music surfs the sweet spot between glam, pop and progressive rock, with shifting time signatures, lurching grooves, meaty guitar riffs and orchestral grandeur. Morris brings Kate Bush, Patti Smith, Jeff Buckley, Siouxsie Sioux and Toyah Wilcox into the vocal mix. ‘Second Best’ sounds like a duet between Ethel Merman and P.J. Harvey. ‘This Is The Killer Speaking’ is an unhinged country-blues, the kind of song Lee Hazelwood used to write for Nancy Sinatra, the psychotic feelings of being dumped given full vent.
For all the musical handbrake turns, a deft melodic touch is never far from the surface. ‘Sail Away’ is a pretty piano-led showstopper, while the 1980s soft-rock grandeur of ‘The Scythe’ reveals a taste for the anthemic which could yet send the group into arenas. Throughout, a love of making interesting noises while hitting things hard adds up to a lot of terrific pop music.
Talking of which, Taylor Swift has a new album out, just for a change. Pleasingly, she has taken on board the advice proffered in my Spectator review of her last release, The Tortured Poets Department, which ran to an exhausting 40 tracks. Having lamented that Swift appeared to have no one in her orbit to advise that less can be more, it is surely no coincidence that The Life of a Showgirl’s 12 tracks clock in at a brisk 41 minutes. Happy to help, madam.
The opening verse of ‘Eldest Daughter’ is so downright awful it reads as pastiche
So that’s the good news. The less cheering update is that much like Lorde’s recent record, Swift over-promises and under-delivers. The album of wall-to-wall ‘bangers’ trailed in the advance publicity fails to materialise. Instead, this is a record of mid-paced pop pleasantries that often sounds incredibly tame compared with her contemporaries.
Recorded during gaps in the European leg of her record-breaking Eras tour, The Life of a Showgirl is upbeat, simple and accessible, but lacks heat. Made with Max Martin, who produced and co-wrote many of Swift’s most enduring hits and is the most successful pop Svengali of the century, the music leans towards factory-tooled genericism. The primary identifying factors are Swift’s voice and lyrics, although her facility with words – stretched badly on The Tortured Poets Department – is further strained here.
The opening verse of ‘Eldest Daughter’ is so downright awful it reads as pastiche. Over a karaoke Jackson 5 backing track, the bedroom innuendo of ‘Wood’ only proves that sex talk is very much not Swift’s forte. She also continues to suffer from a bad case of Last Word Syndrome. The inability to let any petty private feud pass unremarked upon is an increasingly unedifying trait. ‘Actually Romantic’ mocks a rival for being obsessed with Swift, yet taking the time to compose an entire song in response would seem to rather undermine the point.
‘Actually Romantic’ has, at least, a decent tune. ‘Wi$h Li$t’ and ‘Father Figure’, which extrapolates the George Michael track of the same name into a breezy song with a lovely bridge, are also worth a listen. Otherwise, Swift continues her pivot towards making music that is increasingly beige.
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