For English indie-rock quintet The Last Dinner Party, success came quick, with the band forming in 2020 and performing for the first time in 2021 before releasing the highly anticipated, critically acclaimed debut album “Prelude to Ecstasy” this past February.
Latest single “The Feminine Urge” strikes a maternal chord, with The Last Dinner Party collaborating with director Harv Frost on a video driven by a vintage feel.
Singer-guitarist Lizzie Mayland and keyboard player-vocalist Aurora Nishevci spoke with the Sun-Times about processing The Last Dinner Party’s brisk ascent, the new single and embracing different.
Q: I’ve read that you guys are Chappell Roan fans. Did you get to see her Thursday?
Aurora Nishevci: No! So gutted. I watched some videos and I just can’t. I’m just obsessed. I haven’t seen anybody today yet. Because we just got here. But hopefully. Blink-182 are headlining today.
Lizzie Mayland: Two Door Cinema Club is today too. That’s a very teenage angst band, so that will be fun to see.
Q: This has all happened so quickly for The Last Dinner Party. And you’ve really, I think, experienced the full spectrum of fame in a very brief period, the highs and the lows. Have you been able to process it yet at all?
AN: No!
LM: Not a chance.
AN: I think there are so many extreme highs — and then being overwhelmed as well. I’ve been so grateful for everything that’s happened and all of the doors that have opened. It’s incredible and unimaginable. It feels like a whole new world has opened up. And, also, with all of the traveling, I’ve been to places I didn’t think I’d go to before I reached 30, you know what I mean? So, the world, even in that sense, feels like it’s gotten smaller — because it is more accessible to us. It’s a lot to take in, really. A massive lifestyle change I’d say.
Q: There’s such an important message informing your latest single “The Feminine Urge.” How important was it to share that?
AN: I think everyone obviously takes from it; they relate it to their personal experience. But I think it’s so rare to get a song that’s about the relationship to your mother as a woman and that whole maternal line. And it’s a special song in that sense. Because it’s quite difficult to write about. It’s so personal. And it is really cool to see so many people relating to it.
LM: And lots of young women in the crowd as well being given the permission to, like, be angry is really cool to see. People really shout along to the words.
AN: Yeah! “Pull your boots up, boys / And push me down.”
LM: It’s really quite a cathartic song to sing along to, which is nice — especially the bridge. So, it’s been good to see young women and young fans respond like that.
Q: And there’s such a cool, vintage feel to the video. What was it like working with Harv on that?
LM: Oh, so good!
AN: So fun! It was really fun. It was nice that we each kind of explored a different character. And it’s ambiguous enough as well that it can mean many things, each character and their experience, to femininity and being in the world. It’s just a fun video.
Q: When I read coverage of The Last Dinner Party, the name David Bowie is often attached. And one of my favorite things about David Bowie, and Prince for that matter, is the way they made it not just OK to be different but cool to be different — different in the way they looked, dressed, sang, behaved, everything, right? That feels so important today. How important of a role is that for music and musicians to play, to simply help people embrace the idea of different?
LM: I feel like being different doesn’t always have to come in opposition to what the mainstream is. I think people end up seeming that different because they’re being themselves. And I think it’s following that gut instinct, expressing yourself in the most authentic way — and trying to do that with less judgment. That might lead you down a jeans-and-T-shirt route. And all power to you. Or, it might lead you to being a drag king performing in dive bars. I don’t know. I think it’s about individual expression more than going out of your way to try and be different from other people. I think that’s quite isolating.
AN: I think that is definitely the message that we try to put across: embrace yourself, love yourself.