The Last Dinner Party
The Sound at the Del Mar Fairgrounds
Del Mar, California
May 31, 2026
May 31st marked the final West Coast show of The Last Dinner Party’s From the Pyre tour with openers Automatic. While this week is about to wrap their headline tour, the dramatic British rockers have a busy road ahead: a summer of festival dates, an autumn arena run opening for SOMBR, and a 2027 tour supporting Olivia Rodrigo.
If you haven’t heard the band, you might doubt a group could endure such a grueling schedule, but their music provides its own kinetic energy. You begin to wonder if the women are fueled by their own guitar solos and keytar licks. Their sound is a percussive blend of ’60s psych-rock, disco flair, and theater-kid intensity, packed with lyrics that exude sex, angst, and playful winks. They wear their influences on their sleeves, but it’s the seamless, impressive way they weave it all together—shifting from ABBA to The Who to David Bowie in a single breath—that resonates.
Live, the band is even more theatrical. They don’t waste time on idle chatter early on, letting everything hinge on the performance. Dressed as if the Pirates and Time Bandits were undercover in a John Hughes movie, they commanded the stage with dramatic lighting, constant movement from lead vocalist Abigail Morris, and a palpable chemistry from constant shifts in band interaction that kept the audience locked in.
The set flowed between the new album From the Pyre to songs from Prelude to Ecstasy and back again. The band acknowledged that bassist Georgia Davies was back in England recovering from a back injury, a sentiment met with shared longing. Later, while introducing “Gjuha,” pianist Aurora Nishevci shared a poignant shift in perspective: where she once apologized for her lack of Armenian fluency, she now sings the song with pride as a daughter of immigrants. Her comments on the vital role of immigrants in communities, specifically within the United States, drew uproarious applause. A hot topic in this town so close to the US/Mexico border.
Mid-show, the percussive, high-energy single “Big Dog” brought the house down, finally breaking the ice for audience interaction. One particularly charming interaction involved Abigail spotting a handmade doll of herself in the front row and asking the owner if she could keep it. After confirming with the crowd it wouldn’t be narcissistic to keep it and checking with the fan to ensure she wasn’t taking away something she would want for herself, she embaced the creation admiring how it had eyes fashioned from the band’s logo. The doll lived the rest of the show on the speakers.
The band also recounted their first time in Del Mar, sharing a story from their last U.S. tour: they nearly landed in trouble for drinking beers on a San Diego beach, only escaping a citation because they knew how to convert their weight from kilos to pounds for the officers.
For the second-to-last song, they “gifted” us the unreleased track “Knocking at the Sky,” a song that has become a consistent staple of this tour. The main set ended with their breakout hit, “Nothing Matters.” Abigail asked the crowd to put away their phones to be in the moment, then ran through the crowd; while some couldn’t resist breaking the vow, her intent was clear. Sometimes, magic just can’t stay magic.
Though a large group of attendees left after the hit, a dedicated core remained for an encore of “This Killer is Speaking” and a reprise of the “Agnus Dei” outro, which the band used to thank their crew.
