For the as-yet uninitiated, Public Service Broadcasting have been, for 15 years now, the purveyors of the pop concept album. With the exception of their debut, 2013’s Inform-Educate-Entertain (which was made up of eleven mini-themes), the three that have followed have all embraced one big story, to which the band, fronted by all-round genius J. Willgoose, Esq., (the Esq tells you everything you need to know, in a splendid way), put their own spin on. 2015’s The Race For Space was about the battle between The Soviet Union and the USA to put a man on the moon, follow-up Every Valley tackled the decline and struggles around Britain’s coal industry, whilst 2021’s Bright Magic was a loving portrait of all thing Berlin. This time around, the subject matter is Amelia Earhart, and more specifically, what turned out to be her final flight, trying to circumnavigate the globe.
Now, if that all sounds a bit dry and off-putting, then worry not. What PSB are absolute masters at is marry the subject matter to an atmosphere around the stories that they treat with a beauty and with such care, each is then turned into such a fascinating soundscape, although they have had to do things a bit differently on The Last Flight. They are usually the kings of raiding the archives for footage, but on this occasion there wasn’t any, so the spoken word bits on this one, are not actually the usual samples, but are played by actors, with the lines given added distortion to give them the sense of the era, not for one minute that you would ever be able to tell the difference.
Their previous records invoke both agony and ecstasy, depending which part of the story is being dealt with, and this is very much in evident from the start here with the building enthusiasm and hope of opener ‘I Was Always Dreaming’ with it’s soon to be relevant doom-inducing cry of “I have one more good flight left in me”. The rest of the first half has a joyous, super-confident, the world is mine feel about it, from the fast-paced, humorous ‘Towards The Dawn’ which calls straight to mind the “why should a man climb Everest, because it is there” concept of early single ‘Everest’ .
Berlin artist Andreya Casablanca, who appeared on Bright Magic, brings Earhart’ outlook on life into sharp focus on ‘The Fun Of It’ , declaring “I do it because I want to, I do it for the fun of it” before This Is The Kit’s Kate Stables takes over on vocals on the gorgeous ‘The South Atlantic’, which feels like it could fit on The Race For Space, relating to air travel at either end of the spectrum. ‘Electra’ continues their run of dark, life-affirming, almost funk singles, ‘faster than anyone’ being another of the incredibly well-tuned soundbites and flourishes that they use to ram home the storyline on each record, everything they tell you feels so important, and the textures they use underneath these are always perfectly suited.
Things become darker as the album progresses, you can feel it lose it’s jolly outlook (as you would expect bearing in mind the story arc), with each passing song, before another PSB returner EERA, who also appeared on Bright Magic, changes the tone with an almost straight-down-the line love song, ‘A Different Kind Of Love’, which concerns Earhart’s marriage to her husband George Putnam, before heart-breaking closer ‘Howland’, named after the Pacific Ocean island where the flight was meant to re-fuel at, but never arrived, the music fading away to reflect this.
There’s no real benefit in treating The Last Flight as individual tracks, the whole thing, like all of their previous releases, always work better when treated as one suite of music. It’s another stunning addition to one of the finer back catalogues of current times, it is genuinely awe-inspiring that music such as this can be made, and thankfully appreciated by an ever-growing audience. A fitting tribute.
