
PUBLIC SERVICE BROADCASTING
The Last Flight (So)
Nearly a decade after The Race For Space, Public Service Broadcasting have taken to the skies again with The Last Flight, an album about aviator Amelia Earhart – though more broadly a celebration of the indomitable strength of the human spirit and the persistent ambition to achieve.
After ambient opener I Was Always Dreaming, Towards The Dawn is the first track to truly feel the wind beneath its wings – but, as with the robotic rhythm of single Electra, a paean to the pursuit of technological progress familiar from the early tracks on 2017’s Every Valley, there’s a tinge of disappointment that Public Service Broadcasting don’t seem to have quite the same exploratory instinct as their subject.
But The Fun Of It – with Andreya Casablanca reprising her vocalist role from 2021’s Bright Magic – does hit different, a cousin of Grizzly Bear’s Two Weeks; the unusually guitar-heavy Monsoon evokes thrill, exhilaration and danger; and The Last Flight builds to the majestic, poignant finale of Howland, bringing the curtain down on the life of a pioneer who showed how to live.
words BEN WOOLHEAD