Prelude To Ecstasy

An album that dreams not just big but huge. It begins with a literal orchestral overture - 96 seconds of world-building that removes you from boring old reality and plants you into their version of Fantasia. Then, 11 tracks of similarly sky-high, grandiose ambition, that tie together lofty literary sentiment, cinematic sweeping theatricality and killer melodic indie hooks with an equal affinity for each.

Widescreen ambitions should never be criticised, and as Prelude To Ecstasy ends with Mirror, a Cheryl Cole torch song with Nick Cave intensity and Bond-theme bombast, you have to conclude that this album is big, and it is clever.

There’s not a weak moment in these 11 songs.

These writers are resurrecting a long lost art in popular music – using big sounds, with indulgent lyrics, crafting a listening experience so rich it borders on hedonism. Some records are to be tasted, others to be swallowed, and few to be chewed and digested. We’re still digesting Prelude to Ecstasy.

Perhaps it doesn’t quite capture the magical energy of the band’s live performances, but again, that is a totally different experience that would be hard to replicate. Album of the year? Without a doubt, it will be a strong contender.

It’s a delightful, towering debut that will indeed leave you ecstatic.

The Last Dinner Party was able to craft an LP that combines their wide range of influences and filters them through their own artistic lens. This birthed an album that both rocks hard and emphasizes what pop song structures can become when placed in the right hands. We will all remember where we were when we first heard Prelude to Ecstasy, an album that is seemingly just the start for an innovative and daring young act.

Prelude to Ecstasy is one of the strongest debut albums in recent memory, an incredible introduction that creates an inescapable feeling that we are bearing witness to the birth of a generational talent.

One of the best debuts of the year.

A remarkably assured set of bold-faced indie rock and maximalist goth pop teaming with earworm melodies, intelligent, darkly romantic lyrics, and thespian bluster.

They sound and act unlike many of their contemporaries, and seem preoccupied with carefully carving out a unique space in the modern indie scene to inhabit. It’s a fun space, regardless of how you may get there - and I’m glad to be here.

The extravagant and sensual Prelude to Ecstasy is their wine-stained toast to finding beauty in decadence, its cup runneth over with promise.

It’s a remarkably polished debut.

relude to Ecstasy is a delight, filled with enough ideas to suggest that they’ll come up with just as many more the next time around: the Last Dinner Party’s confidence may stem less from the hype they’ve provoked than the fact they know how good they are.

The Last Dinner Party don’t leave one dramatic stone unturned. Pleasurably satisfying, you can’t help but come back for more.

Fantastic songs that are easy to embrace and return to.

Much like “Nothing Matters,” songs like “Caesar on a TV Screen” and “Burn Alive” start like hung-over reveries before vaulting into trampoline pop, wrapping up with crashing crescendos. Over the course of an album, that approach veers towards formula. But there’s no denying the way their blowsy, unrestrained songs knock you upside and down and leave you with a dizzying high.

They managed to mask their eclectic influences and occasionally clichéd ideas behind a loud, bold, excessive sound, spectacular visuals, and provocative lyrics about “candle wax melting in my veins”.

Prelude To Ecstasy, for all intents and purposes, is a really enjoyable pop record, but they are not burning down the mansion with this collection of songs anytime soon.

You crave a little more wreckage in their wake—a more wanton relinquishing of control, perhaps—but their abundant debut more or less lets them have their cake and eat it.