Both sides of the music media machine consumes content at a rapturous pace: We hear new music, bang out a few words, craft an article for speed-reading, and move on to the next; the listener hears new music, adds it to playlist or a tweet, and moves on just as fast. But what happens when both sides hear a song that entirely prevents them from moving forward at such familiar breakneck speed? What happens when repeated listens forces a complete and utter standstill, drunk with such joyous euphoria over this wicked sensation that only brilliant music can provide and utter dread in thinking this will soundtrack all our next moves for a very, very long time?
Enter The Last Dinner Party, the young London band whose debut single, a stunning piece of theatrical indie art-rock and decadent elegance titled “Nothing Matters,” arrived last month via Island Records, following a steady increase in buzz built upon frenetic live shows across their native England. It’s a remarkable and captivating first entry from the quickly hyped quintet, a spellbinding effort that’s likely the best song we’ll hear in all of 2023, and likely to appear in best-of-decade lists in 2030. Unless they manage to top it between now and then.
Dancing through the enchanting sound of “Nothing Matters” are hints of Kate Bush, Suede, Sinead O’Connor, and Feist (we have a few others that come to mind as well, including the same type of innocent folk-rock allure found in “Home” by Edward Sharpe & The Magnetic Zeros). And there’s pure heartbreak poetry in the lyrics, delivered with such seductive smarts and decisive distance by inevitable superstar vocalist Abigail Morris.
Equal parts dramatic and riveting, “Nothing Matters” also contains perhaps the most piercing use of “fuck” in a chorus since Nine Inch Nails propositioned us in “Closer,” as Morris delivers a hypnotic line with crushing weight: “And you can hold me, like he held her / And I will fuck you, like nothing matters.”
In these articles we often supply a quote from the artist to further illustrate a point or a theme; here, The Last Dinner Party speak their volumes through their art. Lyrics like “‘Cause we’re a lot alike, in favour, like a motorbike / A sailor and a nightingale dancing in convertibles” and “We’ve got the highway tight, the moon is bursting with headlights / One more and we’re away, lovе tender in your Chevrolеt” are the types that first send us to Genius, then to Twitter, then finally to the tattoo parlor.
“Nothing Matters,” produced by Last Shadow Puppets’ James Ford, is the rare song in 2023 that forces us to stop the million other things we’re doing at the time, and just sink into this new world they have created.
Instant icon status.
Absorb it all below, via Spotify as well as the visually-stunning, dark, and still playful video directed by Saorla Houston and the band themselves. Then just try the impossible task of moving on to the next.
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