Public Service Broadcasting – The Last Flight: Album Review

By Howard King on 3rd October 2024 • ( Leave a comment )

The ever versatile Public Service Broadcasting release The Last Flight; a tribute to the final exploits of aerial adventurer Amelia Earhart.

Release Date: October 4th 2024

Label: SO Recordings

Format: CD / Vinyl / Digital

HISTORY

Public Service Broadcasting have a reputation for using famous historical events as inspiration for their unique music. The Titanic, World War Two, The Space Race and Welsh mining are amongst their chosen themes so far. It is unusual for musicians to regularly choose such subjects.

One can only think of Al Stewart who had a penchant for turning events and characters into song. Coincidentally, he also chose an aircraft heroine, Amy Johnson (Flying Sorcery) and The Immelman Turn (a German pilot noted for miraculous aerial acrobatics) as themes songs. On The Last Flight, Public Service Broadcasting have used the journals and writings of the brave and daring Amelia Earhart to create an epic soundtrack to her mysterious last journey.

CAPTURING THE SPIRIT

Their songs, as well as being musically brilliant, have a knack of capturing the spirit of the times and Earhart’s personality when interspersed with commentary from radio broadcasts into the instrumentals. Hauntingly, the voice of an actress is used as Amelia Earhart, who became the first woman to fly solo across the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans, setting multiple speed and distance records.

Public Service Broadcasting have chosen individuals for single songs but never dedicated a full album to one single person…until now. “I wanted to do a woman-focused story, because most of the archive we have access to is overwhelmingly male. I was initially drawn in by Earhart’s final fight, rather than the successes that she had, but the more I read the more I became fascinated by her. Her bravery and her aeronautical achievements were extraordinary, but her philosophy and the dignity that she had… she was an outstanding person.“

I WAS ALWAYS DREAMING…

The album begins with our hero, Amelia not Mr Willgoose Esq! “I was always dreaming,” she proclaims. The music soars and glides. Whether it’s Earhart’s mind wandering and planning her future or whether we’re co-piloting her on a flight as she ponders her future, is left up to the listener. Twangy guitar and an electrifying pace exude as we race Towards The Dawn, eagerly anticipating a successful trip.

It’s not too often we have a song with vocals on a Public Service Broadcasting album but with Andreya Casablanca’s vocals amidst Amelia Earhart’s philosophy of ‘I did it for the fun of it,’ is akin to that of Mallory’s ‘I did it because it was there’ type of thinking. Pure and simple, our early 20th century adventurers had no deep philosophy. There were challenges that just had to be achieved.

ELECTRA

The track released as a single, Electra, is another ‘one about a plane.’ Not a Spitfire this time but her Lockheed Model 10-E Electra aircraft in which she was attempting to circumnavigate the globe. Staccato percussion and rhythms and majestic keyboards mix with descriptions of the plane’s power and ability but Amelia sums it up by saying she could write poetry about this plane.

J. Willgoose Esq says of it, “To match the name, the vibrancy and the excitement of the aircraft, the track is full of pulsing electronics and interlocking, percussive melody lines, plus pace.”

The Arabian Flight’s music portrays the danger caused by the terrain being flown over with a forced landing being treacherous on several levels. However, there is also the beauty of the landscape and the skies above it.

Pounding chords, crashing percussion and heavy metal effects reflect the danger of flying in Monsoon country. Flying blind at extreme altitude, the darkness as Amelia’s commentary expresses the fear and plan to overcome the perils of flight in unknown territories .

*Amelia Earhart’s Lockheed Electra 10E Special, NR16020, 1937.*
*(Photograph by F.X. O’Grady, Cleveland State University, Michael Schwartz Library, Division of Special Collections)*

A DIFFERENT KIND OF LOVE

A Different Kind of Love expresses the human side of Amelia. Her solo endeavours required special demands on her relationships. Although it isn’t her actual voice we hear; it is that of actor Kate Graham; Earhart’s personal accounts including 1937’s Last Flight and the biography East To The Dawn by Susan Butler are used to excellent effect.

PROMISE, POSITIVITY AND GLORY

Although the story ends with her doom, which even she undertook knowing the high risks could be fatal the music is far from gloomy. It’s pacy, it has vitality, it’s evocative and experimental. It exudes promise, positivity and glory.

Like Mallory and Scott, when glory is in sight and personal success eluded, their achievements give them long lasting posthumous glory. Howland focuses on her final trip in the Central Pacific. Public Service Broadcasting’s music will help to keep Amelia Earhart’s flame burning, as well as turn people into the story of a true pioneer.

Check out Elektra, below. Public Service Broadcasting are undertaking an extensive tour of the album. You can find all the tour dates here.