Mark Nelson forecasted the future on Pan-American’s 2021 release, The Patience Fader. In a world where instant gratification has evaporated common sense on so many levels, it’s an aspect in modern day culture that Nelson cares little for.
Last year, speaking with Nelson alongside Michael Grigoni in the lead-up to their wonderful collaboration release, New World, Lonely Ride, the former Labradford leader elaborated more on time and patience. Giving songs time to breathe in a bid to find their desired path. It’s been the divining rod that’s made each Pan-American release so different from one to the next.
And Fly the Ocean in a Silver Plane is no different. On Nelson’s ninth solo as Pan-American, the ambient touchstone adopts new methods; the main one being the prominence of Ableton Live, which sees him gravitate towards the same green room sounds that Purelink have mastered this decade. (Led by the glitch-y, mind-scrambling Entrance to Afterlife.)
It’s one of the many new threads Nelson weaves into the Pan-American patchwork. On opening piece, Silver Plane, Now Boarding and later with Silver Tramway (In Snow), he unfurls dynamic, multi-dimensional passages, as sparkling strings, subtle guitar wanderings and ethereal field recordings mysteriously entwine. So layered and rich in texture, it feels more like a slow-motion presentation of head music.
It’s maybe why Fly the Ocean in a Silver Plane takes a little longer to sink into the bones. The patience Nelson has always adhered to, now rightly demanded from his listeners.
Initially inspired by two songs – You Belong to Me by Jo Stafford and Chuck Berry’s Promised Land – the artwork to Fly the Ocean in a Silver Plane also tells a story. A photograph of Nelson’s mother which he only found after her death, it’s a poignant image that gives these compositions extra emotional weight.
Pan American - Fly the Ocean in a Silver PlaneThe song titles, clear reference points, and for anyone who’s lost someone close to them, the embers stir as Nelson’s songs form as vivid backdrops. Despite its shimmering metallic echoes, Death Cleaning contains a brutal emptiness. And it’s hardly offset by Heaven’s Waiting Room. One of the most cathartic compositions Nelson has written, possessing an emotional power that tears you apart from the inside.
And while there are flashes of Nelson’s parts with Desert Under the Bridge being as close to Labradford as he’s been since starting Pan-American, by and large, like he always does, Nelson colonises new frontiers. Honeyman-Scott and Taxi to the Terminal, both meditative sound baths that extend beyond the ideas he exchanged with Grigoni during New World, Lonely Ride.
So too with the pedal steel inflected A Window in the Strings, as Nelson adds his own flavours to the ambient post-country broth. It delicately leads into closing encounter, Golden Gate, Silver City. Akin to stargazing across barren landscapes, featuring vocalist, Mallory Linnehan (A.K.A. Chelsea Bridge), it’s orbital bliss that possesses the kind of tenderness that melts the heart.
Few artists across the experimental landscape have evolved quite like Nelson. From Labradford’s stark nature, the ensuing years has seen him reduce the darkness with more and more light emerging in his work.
It’s measure of Nelson’s artistic growth. Someone who’s always accomplished beautiful results through subtlety, texture, and, indeed, patience. Fly the Ocean in a Silver Plane contains all three, as he navigates through the mind fog to find pockets of peace. And like everything in his body of work, from Labradford and Anjou to his latest collaborations alongside Grigoni and Kramer, it will stand the test of time.
Fly the Ocean in a Silver Plane is out Friday via Kranky. Purchase from Bandcamp.
