The Last Dinner Party – My Lady of Mercy Review

Experimental vibrancy is the clear hook for The Last Dinner Party. Their gothic style meeting with wordplay which beckons a call to arms for long lost soulmates is as explosive as it gets for the five-piece so far. What a way to start. Their latest single, My Lady of Mercy, is a wildcard offering. A fiery stamp of the feet heavily reliant on bass and percussion, the rhythm sections in full swing the whole way through. Entertaining as ever and thematically on point, The Last Dinner Party are not a flash in the pan but an intense new addition to the late-night mixes. Those claps, the swimming pools and trenchcoats along with a wispy guitar, they all scream of The Last Dinner Party, but also of their influences.  

A nice divide is found with a thumping originality guiding their Kate Bush influences. Its lighter opening, the clapping and the percussion which has those same powerful interjections as Jarvis Cocker deployed back in the late 1990s. My Lady of Mercy explodes into something far more interesting than comparisons to a legend. Expectedly sharp wordplay guides the track to completion, a mere three minutes but the perfect sort of material to get up to speed with a band who are determined and, almost inevitably, find themselves rising up the charts. Deservedly so, and with quality as rare and formed as My Lady of Mercy, is a gothic piece of perfection. Damned and whining away with some hefty guitar work, this third single from The Last Dinner Party is a rare beast. 

Not just because of how tremendous the wordplay is, not only for the incredible percussion or build from the guitar but because of how it splits its time. A song of two halves and a scarce example of bleeding genres into one another while still maintaining their independence. Wings did it with Band on the Run, The Pogues’ Fairytale of New York and now The Last Dinner Party with My Lady of Mercy. How it so naturally bridges the gap is extraordinary. Nothing shy of perfection in how this is displayed, and so frequently too with previous singles Nothing Matters and Sinner toying with pace and theme, blurring two together to see the results. Most of the time, it comes good and brings out the very best in a truly unique sound. The Last Dinner Party can cling to this, and if they do, are unstoppable. 

If there were ever a song to define the band so far, My Lady of Mercy would likely be it. A delicate and rhythmic introduction which descends into a volatile and exciting piece. All of their songs so far do, and seeing them live is surely a similarly wild experience. Confident processes from the band bring out their very best, artistic singularity meeting with a defined quality. Only the best can manage it, and sometimes it takes them a decade to get there, as it did for Arctic Monkeys. Others, those bold enough to dive in at the deep end like The Last Dinner Party, are reaping the wild rewards of starting off where any band would hope to get to after a few years of working away. It just goes to show, with a little confidence and a hell of a lot of talent, a band can start off doing what they love and build from there. Hit it out of the park the first time around and producers let the Sparks influence out of the box.