Pan•American’s Fly the Ocean in a Silver Plane Meditates on Air Travel, Mortality, and Americana

Mark Nelson has been unusually prolific lately, with two albums alongside Kramer in 2024 and 2025 and another collaboration with Michael Grigoni this year. But Fly the Ocean in a Silver Plane marks his first full-length Pan•American solo statement since the Alpalhão EP in 2022. Released on Kranky, the album channels that recent activity into a quietly ambitious meditation on movement, departure, and the permeable border between the living and the dead.

Airplanes and airports appear throughout as “liminal zones,” Nelson explains in his notes, a framework shaped by the arrival of his children and the decline of his parents. The instrumental pieces unfold like a flight path: guitar and electronics shift roles as the record progresses, ascending from fingerpicked warmth into almost purely electronic drift before descending again. The structure isn’t didactic, but it echoes the soul-shedding transition Nelson attributes to dreams of air travel — a theme reinforced by song titles like “Death Cleaning,” “Entrance to Afterlife,” and “Golden Gate, Silver City.”

Two songs form what Nelson calls the spine of the record: Jo Stafford’s “You Belong to Me” and Chuck Berry’s “Promised Land.” Their presence threads a lonely, steadfast Americana through the shimmering terrain, the sweet ache of being left behind rubbing against the promise of open movement toward something better. The result is a record that rarely raises its voice but keeps a steady eye on the big, quiet mysteries that travel — and stillness — can hold.