The Last Dinner Party have gotten quite a bit of bad press as industry-manufactured nepos because some of them come from rich families, got signed by Island based on a handful of live gigs before they had released any songs, and opened up for the Rolling Stones before they released their debut album. So, in other words, the Strokes redux. And like the Strokes, none of that has anything to do with their actual music, which is actually quite good. Imagine Kate Bush singing the Sparks songbook and the results coming out as Queen without the grating cheese. The album is a bit inconsistent and, yes, it is bombastic, but what do you expect with those influences? Apparently they even cover “This Town Ain’t Big Enough For The Both Of Us,” live, so if creamy high-pitched falsettos aren’t your thing, you’ll have to just make peace with that. It’s not the masterpiece some critics have hailed it as (they do that with every half-decent rock band that puts out a tolerably listenable record these days), but it does show a lot of promise.

I mean, I enjoyed Wet Leg - their airy Pixies-ish debut was full of fun, catchy, frothy hooks and melodies, but it was a breezy milkshake. History is littered with power-pop bands that release catchy-hooky debuts that grow stale on the followups (Records, Material Issue, Smithereens, Bangles, on and on and on....) and stutter because they’re locked into a fun but limited style that offers no path for artistic growth (see same bands above). I half-suspect Wet Leg are going to be to the 2020s what the Pipettes were to the 2000s. The Pipettes released one massively popular debut (well, with critics and music geeks) of early 60s retro-girl group pop updated with explicit dispatches from the gender wars in the 21st century. They followed it up a few years later with a revamped late 70s retro-disco sound that didn’t go down nearly as well and that was history.

However, The Last Dinner Party’s glammy art-school pop/rock is much more sonically ambitious (too ambitious, maybe?), a style that leaves lots of room for growth and exploration - unlike power-pop/punk-pop/disco-pop/girl group pop. These stylish young fashion-plates might actually have a real artistic future. Or not. They’ll have to develop their songwriting more consistently to take it to the next level. But I like what I hear so far. And the one based on the Robert Browning poem shows that they’re at least literate.