This is a pivotal set for The Last Dinner Party, on the Other Stage on Saturday afternoon at Glastonbury under a blazing sun. The London-based female five-piece’s rise has been meteoric – 15 months ago I saw them play in a windowless room above a pub in Camden, while last summer they performed in a far-flung tent at breakfast time on the Sunday. And here they are today, playing to a crowd of tens of thousands, with a No 1 album and a Brit Award under their collective belts.
I’d slightly expected their set to be this year’s Fred Again.. moment: a confluence of big crowd energy and beautiful weather during the DJ’s set on the same stage last year made it a fabled “Glastonbury moment” – a weird bit of Somerset alchemy that renders a performance bigger than the sum of its parts.
Do The Last Dinner Party achieve this? No. It’s close at times and they brim with confidence. But too often, their set hovers where it could soar.
Perhaps my expectations are just a notch too high (a problem about which this much-hyped band are well aware). But the issue at this show – on surely their most high-profile stage to date – is the ‘bangers to ballads’ ratio. There are too many of the latter, which causes things to lull among the festival crowd.
In another album’s time, with more songs to choose from, they’d surely own this slot and bigger ones to boot. Indeed, there is an undeniable sense that big things might be on the horizon in the future. The Last Dinner Party .
