One Pioneer to Another: Laurie Anderson Meets ‘Amelia’

For all of her quirky experiments and odd, David Lynchian curiosity, composer and multi-instrumentalist Laurie Anderson may have given us her most accessible work yet in 2024. While 1989’s Strange Angels was Anderson’s largely successful attempt at a straightforward pop/rock album, Amelia is a crowd-pleaser for a different reason. In a world of streaming documentary binge-watchers, an album that tells the story of Amelia Earhart’s fateful, final voyage would appeal to many potential record buyers. The project is fascinating, informative, and entertaining, with Anderson behind the wheel. 

Amelia really does come off as a documentary set to music. Beginning with the sound of a plane within a dramatic, ambient background, the brief opener, “To Circle the World”, also includes dramatic narration from Anderson: “It was the sound of the motor I remember the most / Takeoff May 20th, 1937/ Oakland, California.” Setting the scene for Earhart’s flight, which would have made her the first woman to circumnavigate the globe, Anderson approaches her subject with meticulous detail and a combination of reverence and wonder.

Along with impeccable sound design, Anderson sings, speaks, plays keyboards and her trademark viola and has included not only a group of musicians that includes guitar legend Marc Ribot but also a large string orchestra (Filharmonie Brno) as well as a smaller string trio (Trimbach Trio). Vocalist ANOHNI lends her vocals to several of the tracks, electronically processed as to represent the natural elements around Earhart on her journey (such as on “Aloft”, as she sings “Waves of air / Feel the wind blow / Waves of water far below” while the strings provide the hum of Earhart’s engine). 

Laurie Anderson’s voice represents everything from flight log recitations to detailed descriptions of the journey’s conditions and actions. A great example is “Brazil”, as Anderson’s descriptions are evocative and cinematic: “Wet grass / Takeoff was in total darkness / Then pitch black ocean / The south Atlantic.” Later, she says, “The sky has many avenues and streets / But you have to know how to find them.” But along with all the heightened dramatic storytelling, there are also refreshing pockets of simple songcraft, such as in “India and on Down to Australia”, as a lilting string and percussion combination chugs along and Anderson sings of Earhart’s observations above and on the grounds of these seductive foreign lands. As a result, Amelia becomes part travelogue, part witness to history.

Anderson vividly describes what would become increasingly bad conditions for Earhart, both in full-fledged songs as well as brief, self-explanatory interludes such as “Broken Chronometers” and “The Wrong Way”. Documenting what would become the world’s final communication with Earhart and navigator Fred Noonan, the truncated leg of the trip from Papua New Guinea to Howland Island in the South Pacific is retold in “Howland Island” and “Radio”, the latter dealing specifically with the fading transmission between Earhart and the Coast Guard cutter Itasca. Amelia‘s final track, “Lucky Dime”, is a short, graceful conclusion as Anderson speaks: “Shining / My plane is shining / Like a lucky dime / My shadow on the water / It was the sound of the motor I remember the most” (bookending the album with two readings of the same line).

Amelia is a graceful, highly compelling, and entirely successful attempt to musically interpret an important historical event with dignity and eloquence. Laurie Anderson is one of the most artistically significant artists of the last half-century, and it’s only fitting that one of her strongest records in decades is a tribute to a fellow pioneer.