Amelia (2024)

"“It was the sound of the motor I remember the most,” Anderson claims at the beginning of "Amelia". Over the course of 22 tracks, she relates the story of Amelia Earhart’s tragic 1937 attempt to circle the globe. The album plays like an avant-garde history lesson that begins with Earhart taking off from Oakland, charting her voyage east until she vanishes on July 2, 1937, after departing Lae, New Guinea. Backed by the Czech orchestra Filharmonie Brno, Amelia veers from serenity to ominous chaos as the story unspools. Told in a series of imagined entries derived from Earhart’s diaries and telegrams—as well as the musician’s own imaginings—Anderson recites the story in her typical even tone, the terror and the magnificence of Earhart’s journey baked into the narration. Anderson shows us wonder as Earhart touches down in Africa, exhaustion as she reaches Indonesia, and trepidation when she departs New Guinea on her final flight." (Spin)