How do you become Britain’s hottest new band? The old fashioned way.

On a drunken evening in 2019, Abigail Morris and Georgia Davies ran into a discount store in Brixton, south London, and bought a cheap notebook to write down their band’s manifesto.

At the time, the rock group, then called the Dinner Party, had only three members and had never rehearsed any songs. But Morris and Davies – the singer and bassist – knew exactly what they wanted to look and sound like: ‘Gothic’, ‘Indulgent’ and ‘Decadence’ were at the top of their list.

As the English literature students moved from pub to pub, they added their proclamation, including modest ambitions (playing shows with hip British bands) and grander goals (“We want to be role models for younger girls”).

Later that evening, Morris accidentally cut himself on a broken glass and dripped blood on the notepad. “I thought, ‘This is perfect!’” Davies recalled in a recent interview. The splashes highlighted the pair’s vision for a bond that balances between the beautiful and the grotesque.

About four years later, this rigorous but playful approach has helped Davies and Morris achieve some of their goals. The theatrical rock group, now called The Last Dinner Party, has become Britain’s buzziest new band this year.

In January, the group – whose sound is often compared to the compelling pop of Florence + the Machine – launched topped the BBC’s Sound of 2024a much-watched annual poll, in which Adele and PinkPantheress were previously anointed.

At a time when rock bands are often vying for attention, the Last Dinner Party has broken through by taking a surprisingly traditional route, prioritizing touring rather than producing social media-focused hits. A North American tour kicks off Thursday, including sold-out dates at New York’s Webster Hall on March 26 and Brooklyn Steel the next day, as well as the Coachella festival in April.

Morris said this approach, which has taken the band from playing pubs to sold-out 5,000-capacity London theaters, would help them sustain a career. “It doesn’t have a long life when a viral song gets blown up,” she said. “That’s not how you build a community.”

However, a striking visual aesthetic can help. The band’s fashion sense is magpie-like, drawing inspiration from different historical eras and fantastical styles. Last fall, the group set dress codes for a UK tour and although that has come to an end, dozens of younger audience members at a recent gig in London donned outfits including floral headdresses and corsets inspired by the band’s theatrical imagery.

Even those who didn’t dress up seemed all in. Comedian Kerry Godliman, 50, said she became a fan after her daughter returned from a festival and raved about the group. “I love the grandeur of it, the camp archness of it, the theatricality of it,” Godliman said. The fact that the band consists of women and a non-binary person is “still such a rare thing,” she added.

After releasing his debut single, an expletive-filled love song called “nothing matters”, in the spring of 2023, the rise of the Last Dinner Party in Britain has been so rapid that some observers on social media have accused its members – all of whom are in their mid-20s – of being “industry factories” brought together by through reports. label executives.

Roberts, the guitarist, said she found such suggestions “pretty sad,” as if people “don’t want to believe that a young female and non-binary band can be successful.” The reality is less dramatic, Morris added: She’s been an aspiring rock star since her teenage years at a Catholic school, where she developed “a crushing need to be adored by everyone at all times and at all costs.”

She met Davies at university in London; the other three band members were also music-obsessed students in the British capital, who Morris and Davies gradually brought into their group.

With Britain going in and out of lockdown due to the coronavirus pandemic, the up-and-coming band was initially unable to perform live, instead honing their sound: moody, grand indie pop, topped by Morris’ compelling vocals. By the time of the first show in November 2021, Morris said the members had “rehearsed for so long that we were fully formed.” At his fourth show, in a remote location on an industrial estate in south London, record labels flooded the band with messages. (It eventually signed with a major, Island Records, and created a 70-page presentation to explain its vision to the label’s marketing team.)

James Ford, who has worked with Depeche Mode, Jessie Ware and Blur, produced the group’s debut, ‘Prelude to Ecstasy’, which was released last month. He said in an interview that when he walked into the studio and saw the band members with a full string section and horn section, he thought, “I haven’t seen this kind of conviction from a band, nor from the people behind them.” , long time.”

“In the back of my mind I was thinking, this is either going to go really well or it’s going to be a total disaster,” he added.

Tara Richardson, the band’s manager, said the group’s theatricality gives fans relief from the bleak political and economic climate in Britain at the moment. “People want escapism,” she said: “They need an escape.”

In interviews in a Mediterranean cafe in north London, four members of the group emphasized that while their music is escapist, it is not removed from contemporary concerns. The album contains “The feminine urge”, with lyrics mocking men who think women only exist for their entertainment, and “Beautiful boy”, attacking male privilege. “These aren’t just corsets,” Morris said. “It’s Trojan Horse pop music.”

A rapid rise in music can be mind-boggling. Mayland, the guitarist, said some recent experiences, such as attending awards shows, had felt like living “in a TV, this isn’t real.”

But Morris and Davies, the band’s first two members, said they remained focused on the artistic vision they envisioned on that drunken night in Brixton.

“It’s fun to commit to something and follow it to its logical extreme,” Davies said. For now, it will be the world’s favorite new band.