Everyone’s favourite baroque-pop band is back with their second studio album, and they sound as decadent as ever.
After winning the Brit Rising Star award in 2024 and the BRIT award for Best New Artist in 2025, it’s safe to say that The Last Dinner Party had a lot to live up to with their follow up album. From The Pyre invites the listener into the five-piece band’s own mystical world. A place where romance is a battleground, witches watch over you, and the trees talk back. The visuals they are able to create through melody and instrumentation alone are so strong that throughout the course of the album, I found myself transported from western saloons to campfires in forest clearings. This feels like a narrative expansion from their previous album, all of which I could imagine performed in the same great banquet hall. From the Pyre tears down these walls and explores the sweeping landscape that surrounds them.
The sound itself feels more expansive in some places. Although the band has always succeeded in combining classical instrumentation with the pop-rock genre, they seem even more fluid in their use of sub genres within this album. At times, they create a sound that feels closer to glam rock, almost pulling from the style of Roxy Music. I found myself associating some of the choruses on tracks like ‘Count the Ways’ with classic Elton John songs. However, in other places, they completely rewrite the book. ‘Woman is a Tree’ opens with around a minute of sinister vocalisations, which turn into desperate wails before a slow drumbeat begins the track. This feels less like something from a glam rock club night and more like a deleted scene from a Robert Eggers film.
The album continues The Last Dinner Party’s penchant for balancing romantic melodies with visceral, violent imagery. It includes lyrics such as ‘Here comes the apocalypse, and I can’t get enough of it’, ‘My blisters have burst, where my scales used to be ’, and ‘One kiss and I was disembowelled’. However, this time the lyrics of each song are linked to a specific narrative. The band describes the album as ‘a collection of stories’ with shared mythos that ‘binds them’. They go on to say that ‘The songs are character driven but still deeply personal, a commonplace life event pushed to the pathological extreme.’ They toe this narrative line successfully, managing to make these mythical tales feel widely accessible.
Within these vignettes, the band explores many themes, but once again, they are most successful while pondering upon the trials and tribulations of womanhood. ‘I Hold Your Anger’ shines a spotlight upon the disproportionate amount of emotional labour women tend to do in their relationships with men. Morris’s lyrics deplore the expectation that she must prioritise and internalise these male emotions. Her mournful outrage is supported by another legendary Emily Roberts guitar solo. In contrast, ‘Woman Is A Tree’ embraces the good and the bad of the female experience. The witchy chanting invites the listener to join the band’s coven and highlights the positivity of sisterhood and camaraderie in the female experience.
Each band member is given space to shine across the record. Aurora Nishevci’s sombre piano solos, Lizzie Mayland’s hypnotic backing vocals, Roberts’s powerful riffs, Georgia Davies’s grungy basslines, and Morris’s opulent vocals seem to work together more beautifully than ever. There are very few moments where there is nothing interesting or unique happening to capture your attention. This is particularly clear in Abigail’s vocals, which are not just used to tell a story but to embellish the track. She skips between spiky staccato and sweeping legato sections with effortless ease, she reaches pure falsetto notes, creates unique disjunct melodies, and uses melismas to keep the vocal performance dynamic.
For me, the standout track from the first listen was ‘Rifle’. Morris’s voice is assured yet haunting, somehow creating a feeling I can only describe as a kind of hopeless nostalgia. This leads into a frenzied build both in the instrumentation and vocalisation, which cuts off abruptly to start the next melancholic verse. When the feral chorus finally strikes, it feels all the more powerful, a war cry of desperate anguish. However, the vocal performance never wavers during these displays of emotion, with Morris maintaining a sense of formidable control.
It seems to be only during the finale that Morris’s self-assured facade cracks, comparing herself to huge historical figures like Jesus Christ and Joan of Arc before lamenting that ‘I’ve never been myself’. It is not the first time the band has explored the idea of personal identity and performance becoming intertwined; this closing track is thematically very similar to ‘Mirror’ which closed their last album. It seems that as the band’s success grows, so does this insecurity. Not only does the song feel like a beautiful way to humanise the band after their mystical storytelling and unreal performances, it also leaves the listener with the knowledge that these worries will not be the last of them, as Abigail assures the audience that she will ‘keep trying’.
Although the opportunity to listen to the album a week early was extremely thrilling to me, the experience made me realise that what I love most about The Last Dinner Party is the togetherness it brings. Whether it’s playing air guitar in the kitchen with your housemate, singing the lyrics dramatically into your best friend’s face at a party, or dressing up in ribbons and bows alongside every other guest at their concert, the true magic of this band comes from community. I can’t wait until this album is out in the world so that I can experience that again.
From The Pyre is now available to buy. The Last Dinner Party will be playing at the Brighton Centre, tickets are available now.
Another article you may enjoy from The badger: https://thebadgeronline.com/2025/08/album-review-the-clearing-by-wolf-alice/