Music

Watch a stripped-down live set from The Last Dinner Party

XPN | By Raina Douris,

Published February 2, 2024 at 12:55 PM EST

We have been sitting on these live performances from The Last Dinner Party, recorded when they stopped by World Cafe's studio last fall, and we have been dying to share them with you.

Well, Prelude to Ecstasy, the London band's debut album, is finally out today. Since our original interview from December aired, The Last Dinner Party added BBC Radio 1's "Sound Of 2024" among their early-career accolades (plus, WXPN's "Artist To Watch" in January).

In this extended version of our interview, the band performs stripped-down versions of their latest singles, "On Your Side" and "Caesar on a TV Screen." They also talk about writing the album cut of "Beautiful Boy."

"It's basically about feeling envious of a specific kind of man who is so beautiful," says vocalist Abigail Morris, who wrote the song. "You're not attracted to him in a romantic way. It's more about what it's like to walk through life with the specific type of privilege of being just a beautiful man. A beautiful woman is one kind of privilege, but that comes with its own horrors and unfortunate things and fears."

This episode of World Cafe was produced and edited by Kimberly Junod. The web story was created by Miguel Perez. Our engineer is Chris Williams. Our programming and booking coordinator is Chelsea Johnson and our line producer is Will Loftus.

Music

Raina Douris

Raina Douris, an award-winning radio personality from Toronto, Ontario, comes to World Cafe from the CBC (Canadian Broadcasting Corporation), where she was host and writer for the daily live, national morning program Mornings on CBC Music. She was also involved with Canada's highest music honors: hosting the Polaris Music Prize Gala from 2017 to 2019, as well as serving on the jury for both that award and the Juno Awards. Douris has also served as guest host and interviewer for various CBC Music and CBC Radio programs, and red carpet host and interviewer for the Juno Awards and Canadian Country Music Association Awards, as well as a panelist for such renowned CBC programs as Metro Morning, q and CBC News.

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Kimberly Junod

World Cafe senior producer Kimberly Junod has been a part of the World Cafe team since 2001, when she started as the show's first line producer. In 2011 Kimberly launched (and continues to helm) World Cafe's Sense of Place series that includes social media, broadcast and video elements to take listeners across the U.S. and abroad with an intimate look at local music scenes. She was thrilled to be part of the team that received the 2006 ASCAP Deems Taylor Radio Broadcast Award for excellence in music programming. In the time she has spent at World Cafe, Kimberly has produced and edited thousands of interviews and recorded several hundred bands for the program, as well as supervised the show's production staff. She has also taught sound to young women (at Girl's Rock Philly) and adults (as an "Ask an Engineer" at WYNC's Werk It! Women's Podcast Festival).

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