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The Last Dinner Party finally release live staple ‘Big Dog’ with spoken-word piece ‘Come All You Beasts’
The Last Dinner Party have released 'Big Dog' and spoken-word piece 'Come All You Beasts', their first standalone single since From The Pyre.
The Last Dinner Party have released the gritty new single ‘Big Dog’ alongside a spoken-word piece, ‘Come All You Beasts’. It is the first standalone material the band have shared since last year’s sophomore album, From The Pyre, and it pulls a strand of the group’s onstage lore into a formal recording.
Fans who have seen the band on the road will recognise the song: the band have been playing ‘Big Dog’ in sets since their earliest touring days, even before their debut, Prelude To Ecstasy, arrived. At every show the group would recite a poem before launching into the track; those ritual fragments are finally captured in a studio context, after supporters repeatedly urged the band to record it officially.
Co-produced by The Last Dinner Party alongside Animesh Raval, ‘Big Dog’ pushes the band into a darker register than some of their better-known anthems. Abigail Morris and co. lean into a mood that critics and listeners have compared to PJ Harvey, an emotive, uneasy place that foregrounds nuance over spectacle.
“a way to introduce the folkloric and storytelling elements of ‘From the Pyre’ to ‘Big Dog’,” bassist Georgia Davies said.
“The themes of the song were interpolated with Bible verses, subverting prescriptive messages about women’s safety. 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.”
Check out both below.
Touring, festivals and the road ahead
The release arrives while the band are still on a headlining US run that continues until mid-June. After that they return to the UK for festival slots at Isle of Wight, TRNSMT and Latitude, plus a support appearance with Wolf Alice at Finsbury Park. They will also make their first festival headline appearance at Wilderness.
Other recently announced dates include shows supporting Olivia Rodrigo on her Unraveled Tour — The Last Dinner Party already supported Rodrigo at BST Hyde Park last summer — and opening on Sombr’s 14-date US tour.
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Although ‘Big Dog’ is their first standalone single since From The Pyre, the band did surface elsewhere this year: they contributed a lovelorn, passionate song called ‘Let’s Do It Again!’ to the War Child Help(2) charity compilation.
“‘From The Pyre’ arrives just under two years after The Last Dinner Party swirled onto the scene properly with their debut, but never feels as if it’s been hurried to capitalise on momentum. Instead, it’s an accomplished listen – still as deliciously dramatic as ‘Prelude To Ecstasy’, fleshing out their world more and more with daring, dashing songs of true depth.”
That NME four-star appraisal locates the band between theatricality and craft, and ‘Big Dog’ underscores that tension: a song born in the crowd, reshaped in the studio, and now tied overtly to the literary performance that has become part of their identity. It is a small but telling move for a band still negotiating how their onstage mythology translates into recorded work.
