The Last Dinner Party, ‘one of indie’s hottest new acts’, coming soon to Cambridge
Described by the Evening Standard as “the most talked-about band in Britain” and hailed as “one of indie’s hottest new acts” by The Guardian, these are exciting times for The Last Dinner Party.
The all-female quintet made their Glastonbury debut this summer, playing to a near-capacity crowd at Woodsies in the Saturday breakfast slot, and also performed at other top festivals including Latitude, Reading and Leeds.
Keyboard player/vocalist Aurora Nischevi – the rest of the line-up comprises Abigail Morris (vocals), Lizzie Mayland (vocals, guitar), Emily Roberts (lead guitar, mandolin, flute) and Georgia Davies (bass) – spoke to the Cambridge Independent from London, where she and her bandmates had recently been busy recording their bit for a rather well-known TV show.
“We just played Jools Holland,” reveals Aurora, whose parents emigrated to the UK from Kosovo in the 90s, meeting when they were over here, “which was surreal, and today we’re doing some live recordings off our album – so it’s going to be really fun today and tomorrow.”
The band have so far released two very well-received singles, Nothing Matters and Sinner, and Aurora notes that their debut album, on which both these songs will appear, is due to be released early next year.
On all the hype surrounding the band, and the positive comments they’ve received from the music press and an ever-growing fanbase, Aurora, a fan of artists such as Metallica, Led Zeppelin, Tracy Chapman and Whitney Houston growing up, says: “We’re just very humbled and grateful to have so many people believing in this thing – it feels like a collective effort.
“It feels like there’s no time to sit with it and be like, ‘OK, this is real, this is what’s happening, we played Glastonbury...’
“But also it’s nice, I think, being in a band for that reason, because we’re all in it together and there’s no one else that quite understands it the same way as your bandmates. We can kind of support each other in that.”
Aurora and Emily were the last members of the band to join. “Georgia and Lizzie and Abi were friends at uni,” explains Aurora, “and then towards the end of uni they formed this band and they found us by asking around.
“I think Abi asked one of her mates, ‘Who’s the best guitarist you know?’ and they were like ‘Emily Roberts’ and then me and Emily knew each other because we were studying music together and she brought me on board as well and here we are.”
Aurora, who started learning classical piano at the age of seven, met Emily while the pair were students at the Guildhall School of Music and Drama, where Aurora was doing a master’s following her undergraduate degree at the Trinity Laban Conservatoire of Music and Dance.
“I just carried on doing music,” she says of her early years as a musician, “it was never like a ‘now I’m going to do this’, it was just something I kept doing and kept doing more intensely – because then I went on to uni to study composition.
“For a bit I thought I was going to be a composer – I still am a composer; I wrote the orchestral prelude to the album that we walk out to on stage, so that’s nice as well being in this band, that kind of openness to do anything, any kind of music.
“There’s no real limits because we’re all very excited about music.”
The Last Dinner Party will be appearing at The Portland Arms on Thursday, October 19 – which happens to be singer Abi’s birthday.
Tickets, priced £16.50, are available at theportlandarms.co.uk/wp/. For more on The Last Dinner Party, visit thelastdinnerparty.co.uk. The new series of Later... with Jools Holland is due to start this Saturday (October 14).
