Track of the Week: The Last Dinner Party demand respect with a fierce bite on ‘Big Dog’
Led Zeppelin in Victorian gowns, Iggy Pop in a corset – The Last Dinner Party have always been in the league of the loud and angry greats.
When we talk about sexism in the music industry, this is what we’re getting at. When The Last Dinner Party first launched with ‘Nothing Matters’, rather than commenting on the greatness of the track, on Emily Roberts’ roaring guitar solo or Abigail Morris’ insane range, people instead seemed unable to move past their style. Arriving with a cinematic music video, it was deemed that the band looked too good, too polished, too cool to be authentic. Surely they were plants, surely they’d been posed and positioned.
That conversation is one that always rumbles alongside any act made up of non-men who have a great look. Picture Parlour were hit with it, so was Wet Leg. By now, it’s basically just a rite of passage for these bands, perhaps even a badge of honour that you’ve arrived with such instant power to spark the conversation up.
But when it comes to The Last Dinner Party, it remained exhaustingly loud despite the band proving themselves and proving themselves and proving themselves. The group are so far beyond the initial doubting that came along with their debut. Any claims that they’d have their 15 minutes and be forgotten are long since left in the dust as their debut album, Prelude To Ecstacy, was a hit, leading to bigger shows, bigger tours and then leading to an even bigger follow-up, From The Pyre.
On that second album, they expanded endlessly in their musicality too, taking the influences of pop, punk, folk and beyond that they’ve always had, but giving them more intensity and more breathing room. Across the album, they transform from beast to beast, from traditional folk vocal unit on ‘Woman Is A Tree’ to country stars on ‘This Is The Killer Speaking’ to anthemic classic rockers on ‘The Scythe’.
Now co-signed by people like Brian May, who deemed the band “British rock royalty”, surely there is still no doubt that the London act are one of this generation’s finest and an act sure to make the history books? But no – there is always still that boring chorus determined to write them off as plants, as rich kids, or even as an act who are only successful because they’re attractive.
Clearly, as sick of that as the rest are, the band finally shared the long-awaited unreleased track ‘Big Dog’, a track that has been biting and scratching on their live set for a good while now.
Beginning with a loud bark, it roars to life. It’s not at all that the band suddenly transform into a rowdy heavy rock or punk act, they have literally always had this power in their sound. But ‘Big Dog’ is the most outright it has ever been in both craft and lyricism as Morris snarls, “Who’s the real gunslinger? Who’s beneath my little finger? I’m above you, have no mercy, rabid, raving, I’m a big dog.”
Sick of being the pretty little things or being packaged away in that box, this is a howl of defiance as the band remind the world that they are, in fact, a big dog. With success proven over and over, with power earned through their talent, this is now a song that demands respect for that.
When presented alongside the accompanying poem, ‘Come All You Beast’, the two together become something even bigger. While the punk tune feels specifically about the band’s experience as performers, the poem is broader. “The themes of the song were interpolated with Bible verses, subverting prescriptive messages about women’s safety,” bassist Georgia Davies said about the writing of the poem.
Adding, “We have always been inspired by poetry and performance in all forms, so spoken word with improvisational accompaniment felt like a natural extension of our art.”
Made to move as a pack just as the poem says, the two pieces are “Bound together like some four-legged creature, untamed,” calling to women everywhere, and especially non-male artists endlessly doubted by the industry – “Come and devour.”
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