This, the latest in the series of Elektra reissues from Man In The Moon Records, is quite a strange album in that from the title you’d expect a concept album built around the legend of Amelia Earhart, but it only accounts for a couple of songs herein. Plainsong were a band born with great expectations. It was formed by Ian* Matthews (guitar, vocals) and Andy Roberts (guitar, vocals) with the lesser known Dave Richards (keyboards) and Bob Ronga (bass). The album artwork doesn’t actually credit them.
I say there were great expectations. A guy I knew at school (who was a fan of all things Fairport) thought they could be the new Beatles (perhaps I exaggerate a bit there). But they were pretty good but didn’t stick around to live up to the early promise.
It’s a real mixed bag. Opening track For The Second Time is gorgeous and heart-breaking. It’s a Matthews’ song and utterly poignant. Every-time I hear him sing “For the second time in year I was broken” I feel my throat tighten. Maybe that’s because I can directly relate to it, but that aside it’s a really beautiful and moving song. The mood is immediately shattered by the next song Yo-Yo Man. It’s an upbeat country song, and in its own way perfectly fine. You could argue it is a fine example of the band’s versatility, but I find the contrast with the opening song jarring.
So what of Amelia Earhart, who is the heroine of the piece, you ask. There’s a trilogy of songs here: Amelia Earhart’s Last Flight and The True Story Of Amelia Earhart’s Last Night linked by I’ll Fly Away (the same song that appears on the O, Brother Where Art Thou? soundtrack performed by Alison Krauss and Gillian Welch). What the two songs about Earhart do is present competing narratives; the first is the story about her taking off from New Guinea, with Captain Frederick Noonan, as part of her attempt to circumnavigate the globe flying West to East and disappearing without trace. It’s the story I knew. The second suggests they landed somewhere and were captured, imprisoned and presumably died at the hands of the Japanese, the two pilots being spotted as prisoners by a stevedore in Saipan.
Last flight… was written by a songwriter named David McEnery who put it out in the late 1930s. It’s a strange song, because you’d expect it to be a lament but it’s a jaunty number that you could almost expect to be performed at a square dance: “Happy landings Amelia Earhart/Farewell first lady of the air”
The linking song I’ll Fly Away is a simple arrangement of mandolin, handclaps and voices but while it is much the same interpretation as the Krauss/Welch version it sounds really strange to hear male voices singing it. Once I got over the disconsternation of this it works really well.
The True Story… initially seems too wordy but it really worked some magic on me because after a few listens I came to really like it. Its feel is much sadder, recognising that it is about two people who died, and a complete contrast to Last flight… musically as well in the narrative. Even The Guiding Light follows Earhart and is really intriguing. It appears to be a farewell to Fairport Convention, but one tinged with bitterness and regret. “I went up on the ledge/And didn’t find a soul around…”
For those unfamiliar with Fairport Meet On The Ledge has become their anthem and closes the Cropredy Festival each year. The chorus goes: Meet on the ledge, we’re gonna meet on the ledge/When my time is up I’m gonna see all my friends
On the original version Matthews shared the vocals with Sandy Denny. Here he sings: “Now we’re falling over all these chiefs/And running out of braves” and later in the song: “Send me home with a country song/And leave it ringing round”. Yet while this suggests that the parting was less than sweet sorrow, time has healed the wounds and they’ve played together in various groups and Matthews has appeared at Cropredy. But clearly the country direction that Matthews followed with Southern Comfort and later on with this record shows he was very much at odds with the direction Fairport went in. The song is the rockiest on the album and finishes with an excellent guitar solo, I assume played by Andy Roberts.
It’s followed by another gorgeous Matthews composition Side Roads. Another melancholic song but again simply beautiful. Possibly addressed to the same lover that For The Second Time is about, it again features some lovely guitar from Andy Roberts and is probably my favourite song on the album.
The album ends with a song by Jerry Yester and Judy Henske titled Raider. This is taken from one of the notable reissues of 2016, their album Farewell Aldebaran. It got high praise in the reissue thread elsewhere on this site. This is a driving, menacing version completely at odds with the original. An excellent album closer. Earlier in the album there’s another Matthews’ composition Call The Tune which could also be a Fairport farewell, but less obviously. Again it demonstrates Matthews’ songwriting capability with a strong melody and literate lyrics.
The remaining two songs are Diesel On My Tail and Louise. Diesel could be a Merle Haggard song (though it is credited to someone just given as J. Fagan). It seems to me to be the inspiration for Steven Spielberg’s first film Duel. It was the title track for a Bluegrass album by a couple of guys called Jim and Jesse, released in 1967. It’s about a guy in a car being chased by a diesel truck: “While I’m trembling a’shaking he’s blowin’ on the horn/So close I could steal his licence plate” The Plainsong version is less bluegrass and more a straight country rock version. Louise is a song I know sung by Bonnie Raitt, and the arrangement here is the same as hers, though tougher sounding with the male vocals.
Lastly I’d like to mention the cover art. At first glance it’s somewhat unprepossessing, but then I started noticing some of the details, the lettering, the borders and it’s a fine art-deco pastiche, with a design echoing the Japanese Rising Sun flag and is all in all is rather excellent. It’s credited to Seabrook/Graves/Aslett – names that mean nothing to me. So what we have is a mixed bag. The strange thing is that the strongest songs are the Ian Matthews compositions, but only five of the eleven are his. The sad aspect is that the band didn’t last. No doubt at the time they felt (may have been pressured into) getting the album out and getting on the road. In 1972 the turnover of album releases was at a far higher rate than today. A gap of two years between releases was almost unheard of. From: https://theafterword.co.uk/plainsong-in-search-of-amelia-earhart/
