It’s sobering to think that Mark Nelson aka Pan•American has been diligently considering and creating musical radiance for over twenty-five years now. Guitarist, vocalist and founder member of post-rock, ambient pioneers LaBradford, his own solo releases, especially since that band’s hiatus in 2001, has become a cornerstone of the Kranky catalogue. He’s been dubbed a ‘romantic minimalist’, even ‘Duanne Eddy playing Erik Satie’ by Brian Eno but it’s not easy to slap a strapline on his exquisitely detailed, eloquent soundscapes. Pan•American music is unique in capturing those vast expanses of forest, river and city but also reaching into more deeply personal spaces. It imagines and reflects in harmony.
Besides collaborative albums with Mr Shimmy Disc Kramer and guitarist Michael Grigoni, Nelson’s last solo Pan American album was 2022’s ‘The Patience Fader‘. Following on from his 2019 collection ‘A Son’, both releases drew more on American folk guitar and song as a sonic foundation. Pan American’s distinctive electronically crafted ambience was left simmering. But now for the more far-reaching excursions of ‘Fly The Ocean In A Silver Plane’, the digital and acoustic are tantalisingly merged.
Talking about the focus of his new Kranky release Nelson has revealed that “The music on this record is a reflection of journeys and travel. The real world kind and the metaphorical ones as well”. It’s an album of ten delicately rendered pieces which capture thoughts and memories like a slide show. Silver Plane, Now Boarding opens the record, innocent and nostalgic with children’s voices and chirping crickets. Nelson’s electric guitar strums warmly, synths tingle and the yearning violin of Mallory Linnehan (aka Chelsea Bridge) sings a farewell. Filled with expectation and sadness it mirrors Jo Stafford’s fifties big band hit, You belong to me, a tune etched in Nelson’s memory which he acknowledges as a touchstone for this new music. A line from Stafford’s gorgeous smooch, “fly the ocean in a silver plane/see the jungle when it’s wet with rain”, is fittingly reflected in the album title.
Death Cleaning, another song of separation, explores the tension between moving on and clinging to the familiar. The guitars build a rolling fingerpicked loop with the soft skip of rhythm ticks away gently. Over the dream wave pulse Nelson quietly sings ‘You can go’ while Mallory Linnehan joins as a whispering echo. It’s a goodbye song which has a lingering chill about it and a sense that the journeying which this Pan•American album is considering goes deeper than a simple musical travelogue.
So while Desert Under Bridge draws an ambient landscape of guitar undulations and the burbling electronica of Taxi To The Terminal Gate mind-wanders contentedly, other tracks seem to playfully imagine other, less certain places. Take Heaven’s Waiting Room, where Sakamoto new age synth patterns fizz and hum to a subdued rhumba beat. Or try Entrance To Afterlife, which is more direct, even a tad urgent, with a chugging Vangelis locomotion and synth patterns chattering in hopeful anticipation.
There’s always been a lightness of touch about Pan•American‘s music, it opens you up to contemplation. The more guitar-based, electro-acoustic pieces on ‘Fly The Ocean In A Silver Plane’ also seem to connect with times gone by as well as looking ahead. OnSilver Tramway (In Snow) the locomotive electronica is tempered by a mournful violin melody plus the electronic creeks of weary gears. Honeyman Scott is sparser, drifting across that ambient Americana horizon, its restrained jangle of slide guitar patterns mingling like ripples in a creek, while the yearningA Window In The Strings shimmers with an understated post rock intention. Momentarily this spacious song finds itself gliding the closest to early LaBradford co-ordinates.
Such recurrent sonic and conceptual references hold‘Fly The Ocean On A Silver Plane’ together, giving the album a narrative purpose. Each piece responds to the idea that our paths are always connected, people move on but their direction is inseparable from their history. Poignantly Nelson also chooses a photo of his mother when she was young as the album’s cover and dedicates the beautifully hymnal closing track,Golden Gate Silver City to the much-missed Brian McBride, founder of the seminal Stars Of The Lid. Such fine details signify that this album is so much more than a random collection of well-crafted instrumentals. Once again Pan•American has created work which is deceptively moving, an intricate listening journey which takes you on your own travels.
Get your copy of ‘Fly the Ocean in a Silver Plane’ by Pan•American from your local record store or direct from Kranky HERE
