Laurie Anderson has announced a new album centered around pioneering aviator Amelia Earhart’s tragic last flight. Amelia is out August 30 via Nonesuch. Lead single “Road to Mandalay” is the first preview of Anderson’s take on the topic, and you can listen to it below.
“The words used in Amelia are inspired by her pilot diaries, the telegrams she wrote to her husband, and my idea of what a woman flying around the world might think about,” Anderson explained. Helping bring her musical vision to life are Czech orchestra Filharmonie Brno with conductor Dennis Russell Davies, Anohni, Gabriel Cabezas, Rob Moose, Ryan Kelly, Martha Mooke, Marc Ribot, Tony Scherr, Nadia Sirota, and Kenny Wolleson.
Amelia is Anderson’s first proper album in six years, following her Grammy-winning 2018 record Landfall. The following year, she joined Tenzin Choegyal and Jesse Paris Smith for Songs From the Bardo, in which Anderson read passages from The Bardo Thodol translated into English by Choegyal. Earlier this year, Anderson received a Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award.
Read the Sunday Review of Laurie Anderson’s first live collection, 1984’s United States Live, and revisit “How Experimental Musicians Are Soundtracking the End of the World” on the Pitch.
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Amelia:
01 To Circle the World
02 I See Something Shining
03 Take-Off
04 Aloft
05 San Juan
06 Brazil
07 Crossing the Equator
08 The Badlands
09 Waves of Sand
10 The Letter
11 India and on Down to Australia
12 This Modern World
13 Flying at Night
14 The Word for Woman Here
15 Road to Mandalay
16 Broken Chronometers
17 Nothing but Silt
18 The Wrong Way
19 Fly Into the Sun
20 Howland Island
21 Radio
22 Lucky Dime