The London quintet The Last Dinner Party releases From the Pyre on October 17, 2025, through Island Records. Produced by Markus Dravs, this second album ignites baroque pop with a more theatrical and incisive turn. In Paris, a private listening session at the Fnac des Ternes kicks off the group’s promotion. This initiative is supported by singles. Additionally, attentive press coverage also contributes to this momentum. The goal: to confirm, after From the Pyre extends ‘Prelude to Ecstasy’, the critical and public momentum.
Milestones: release, production, promotion, and members
The quintet The Last Dinner Party consisting of Abigail Morris, Lizzie Mayland, Emily Roberts, Georgia Davies, and Aurora Nishevci returns with From the Pyre, their second studio album released on October 17, 2025, through Island Records and produced by Markus Dravs, a sought-after craftsman of grand sound architectures. In Paris, a private listening session gathered the group’s early supporters at the Fnac des Ternes. Simultaneously, dense critical coverage has unfolded on both sides of the Channel. In London, where most of the foundational scenes of the adventure take place, the musicians have crafted a burning material. This material is theatrical and driven by singles that preceded the release. Moreover, a simple and effective strategy combines press, radio, and fan meetings.
To set a milestone, let’s recall that Prelude to Ecstasy inaugurated the ascent in 2024 and reached number one in the UK. From the Pyre takes over and assumes a more direct approach. The promise is no longer ecstasy but embers. The group advances tightly, the guitars carve clear lines, and singer Abigail Morris unfolds with the fervor of a tragedian.
An Assumed Aesthetic Gamble
The title announces the image. From the Pyre evokes the pyre, not as an end, but as a ritual of transfiguration. The baroque pop dear to the quintet marries an art rock that refuses lukewarmness. Ornamentation is never decorative; it serves the dramatic momentum. A choir appears, a harpsichord emerges, a string motif brushes the air like a garter of fire. The song becomes a scene, each piece like a character’s entrance. One thinks of those red draperies that, in their iconography, speak of the voluptuousness of shadow and the temptation of velvet. The album explores this contrast between the silky and the sharp. It oscillates between the ball gown and the dagger in the sleeve.
The turn is more theatrical, more incisive. It does not erase the grace of the first album; it spurs it on. In the background, an intimate mythology surfaces. The heroines stand, wounded but upright, ready to drink the light like a stage line. The rumor of a modern city runs through the songs with its neon lights and warehouse districts, London seen from a bridge where one still returns with the smell of the club and the cold morning.
The Sound Factory of Markus Dravs
One recognizes the touch of Markus Dravs, a producer capable of erecting cathedrals without stifling the human element. He places silence thresholds before bursts, sculpts crescendos that do not collapse on themselves, opens the space for singer Abigail Morris‘s voice to advance without forcing. The mix, rigorous and ample, allows Georgia Davies‘s bass to breathe and the guitar weaving led by Lizzie Mayland and Emily Roberts. Aurora Nishevci connects the whole with keyboards that never imitate, that insinuate. The drums, held like a short phrase, know when to enter, when to be absent so that the dynamics remain lively.
Dravs guides the group towards a new density. The timbres gain in definition, the angles assert themselves, the choruses leap. No overload, but a pronounced taste for textures that stack methodically. The result strikes with its coherence. One hears a troupe. One sees a stage. The decor changes in view, the tension does not fall.
Production focus. Known for his sense of sound architecture, Markus Dravs refines contrasts here rather than inflating volumes. He organizes intensity thresholds, favors clear vocal placements, and instrumental textures that respond to each other. His journey alongside major pop and alternative rock formations illuminates this science of relief: breadth, clarity, and this way of leaving a margin of risk for interpretation.
Songs That Take the Stage
From the opening, the album sets a lively prologue, like a red curtain drawn with a sharp gesture. The voice leads, confident, with a diction that refuses smudges. In the middle of the journey, a ballad holds back the fall. A slow rise of organ and strings is heard. The motif clears up then splits in two. This allows a clear guitar to pass through. Further on, a nervous track launches, almost spoken, then falls back into a biting and embracing choir.
The singles released beforehand already set the tone. One advanced masked, sharp, as if the narrator spoke the intimate with the calm of an executioner. Another rose in a funeral march, the relentless dance of a scythe that turns and returns. A third played the frankness of the second plan, the twisted confession that suddenly illuminates the true desire. All three assert a sharper pen. They favor less conventional structures and a striking staging. This one prefers impact over beautiful effect.
One will note how the group allows itself almost liturgical choirs to support a moment of grace, then breaks the moment with a rhythmic detour reminiscent of the best of British indie. The guitars do not seek saturation for its own sake. They sting, they draw, they set a frame for the drama of the song. The taste for chamber music, already present on the first album, returns in touches. But it is the enunciation that leads, straight, conquering, sometimes tender.
In this sound theater, Georgia Davies‘s bass often holds the key: round lines that push the choruses, sustained notes that let the verses breathe. Lizzie Mayland and Emily Roberts‘s guitars favor clear attack, sometimes in arpeggios, sometimes in staccato strokes that catch the melody without weighing it down. A harpsichord line occasionally doubles the high line, giving that baroque grain that defines the group. The three-part choirs do not just adorn: they shift the perspective, set up responses, open harmonic doors. The drums, dry and precise, measure the supports, create white spaces where singer Abigail Morris can take control, up to the burst. One perceives particular care given to transitions, those few measures that move from one climate to another. Moreover, they do so without breaking the thread, as if each track followed the logic of an act.
From London to Paris, the Path of Fervor
Geography matters. London remains the group’s matrix. One hears the studios, the sweat of the halls, the discipline of rehearsals. This second album retains the pulse. Paris hosts the celebration. A private listening session at the Fnac des Ternes played the card of proximity. Profiles are turned towards the control room, while murmurs rise when the first track begins. A common breath is created in the silence left by a coda.
In Paris, the listening session was held in a small committee in a dedicated space of the store. The tracks were discovered in preview and discussed on the spot. The setup, deliberately simple, aimed for proximity: no showiness, a careful sound, a few introductory words, then the music in the foreground. The event served as a relay for the French coverage between reviews published on the day and echoes on social networks. These came from Fnac.
The community formed around the group is mostly young. They read the songs literally and recognize themselves in this theater. This theater refuses sarcasm but prefers controlled excess.
The promotion plan relies on increased visibility in British press and French media. Additionally, it relies on content released gradually. Moreover, the complicity of a fan base documents each appearance. This attention economy corresponds to the artistic project. The group does not seek saturation. It bets on presence, on recurrence, on a clear aesthetic.
What This Second Album Tells
From the Pyre speaks of combustion, not ashes. It tells of the lucidity snatched from the night. Then, it evokes the angers finally directed. Furthermore, it describes the fatigue that turns into a straight line. It speaks of love and power, friendship and desire, especially emancipation. One encounters figures of fallen nobility. Moreover, one meets heroines on the edge of the abyss. Finally, there are gestures of forgiveness that sound like victories.
The group advances theatricality as a primary language, not as an effect. This is heard in the transitions and in the small false endings. Then, it is perceived in the art of relaunching a rhythm with a vocal push. The words are anchored in simple vocabulary, the imagery is charged with myths and everyday scenes. One guesses a library, one also guesses a taste for spectacle. Nothing is ironic. Distance does not cancel fervor. It concentrates it.
Echoes and References
The affiliations are never servile. One perceives reminiscences of great British pop, which loves choirs and flights. Moreover, there is a sense of drama that could be described as operatic. Then, a cadence recalls the cabaret when the bass trots and the piano sketches a sidestep. Echoes of Kate Bush pass in the way of pushing the voice towards feverish exclamation. Shadows of Bowie emerge in the art of direct address. One also hears the rigor of writing that has frequented scholarly music without freezing.
The group plays with its costumes, its lights, its colors. This art of the stage irrigates the songs and gives them an extra visibility. The baroque iconography is not a mask; it is the translation of an imagination. It tells of the desire to transform vulnerability into a parade. It speaks of the pleasure of setting a table and inviting the audience to take a seat.
Critical Reception, Public Stakes
Upon its release on October 17, 2025, the album sparked contrasting readings. Part of the press praises the boldness of a second album. Indeed, this album does not seek to reproduce the first. Moreover, it claims its fever. Other voices find the whole too loaded, too full, at the risk of engulfing the melody. These reservations speak less of a weakness than of an aesthetic preference. From the Pyre demands adherence to its theater. It does not seek discretion.
On the public side, the trajectory follows the continuity of the previous success. The fan base has expanded. The venues fill up quickly. The group could cross a symbolic threshold in continental Europe. The songs gain power as they are equipped with choirs and interludes, and the stage and concert reinforce this sound theater. One already imagines the finale in long torches. Moreover, the encore is reduced to a sustained note. Furthermore, it’s almost a thread of light in the night.
A Consolidating Place
The Last Dinner Party now occupies a unique place in the British scene. Their writing embraces ornaments, their play embraces narration. The era loves clear gestures. The quintet offers one that dares drapes, breaks, and angular fractures. Their success is not a coincidence. It results from patient work and concerts where one learns to hold a room. Moreover, it relies on production choices that refuse ease. Furthermore, it shows a taste for literature and imagery.
It is not a manifesto. It is an album that tells a team. One hears strong individualities and their art of serving the whole. One measures an appetite for duration. The group advances with a keen awareness of what a second album can offer. A consolidation. An expansion. A calculated audacity.
Verdict
From the Pyre confirms the critical and public success initiated by Prelude to Ecstasy and outlines a future that refuses caution. The band chooses the flame, the staging, the grandeur. It weaves virtuosity and emotion with a sure instinct. You leave the album as if leaving a performance, with the desire to see it played again, standing, in a venue where you can hear the voices resonate and see the arms rise. The pyre burns nothing. It illuminates. It warms. It allows for new metamorphoses.