Laurie Anderson is back to announce Amelia, her first album in six years, due out on August 30th via Nonesuch. She’s also offered the album’s first preview, “Road to Mandalay.”
Amelia is a concept album comprised of 22 songs tracking the renowned aviator Amelia Earhart’s final flight. Laurie Anderson previously conceived Amelia for a performance at Carnegie Hall in 2000, and the artist recently updated the composition and performed it across Europe. She recorded Amelia with the Czech orchestra Filharmonie Brno, who were conducted by Dennis Russell Davies — collaborators included Anohni, Gabriel Cabezas, Rob Moose, Ryan Kelly, Martha Mooke, Marc Ribot, Tony Scherr, Nadia Sirota, and Kenny Wolleson.
The project tracks the origins and subsequent misfortune of Amelia Earhart’s transatlantic flight, which crashed in an unknown locale and left the pioneering pilot stranded. “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 said about the project.
“Road to Mandalay,” the album’s first single, is a brief, bright sample from Amelia. It plays out like Earhart’s internal monologue, with stream-of-consciousness pondering and a sense of both discovery and anxiety. As she concludes her verse, the orchestra swells — “Where am I?,” Anderson asks as Earhart, certainly unable to answer her own query. Listen to “Road to Mandalay” below.
Anderson’s last album was 2018’s Landfall, which was inspired by Hurricane Sandy. Most recently, Anderson was the co-artistic director of this year’s Tibet House Benefit Concert at Carnegie Hall, which featured performances from Joan Baez, Maggie Rogers, Maya Hawke, Gogol Bordello, and more.
Amelia Album Artwork:
Amelia Tracklist:
01. “To Circle the World”
02. “I See Something Shining”
03. “Takeoff”
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”
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”