In 1985, Paul Hardcastle scored a huge hit on both sides of the Atlantic with “19,” a song that combined dance beats with spoken-word samples from an ABC documentary about the Vietnam War. The song’s title came from the film’s voice-over narration: “In World War II, the average age of the combat soldier was twenty-six. In Vietnam, he was nineteen.” Hardcastle stuttered the latter number to make a memorable chorus, “N-n-n-nineteen. N-n-n-nineteen.” An uncanny combination of protest song and dance music, “19” was Hardcastle’s biggest hit by far, and also a departure from much of the rest of his work, which hewed more closely to traditional club music. (Hardcastle has since reimagined the song for the war in Afghanistan.)
Three decades after “19,” Hardcastle’s formula is being taken up by the British band Public Service Broadcasting. P.S.B. is the brainchild of the pseudonymous J. Willgoose, Esq., a multi-instrumentalist from South London, who started performing in 2009. After early experiments with building songs around samples from video-game sound effects and B-movies, Willgoose began to use footage from the British Film Institute’s archive. When his music met with a positive response in local pubs, the concept for P.S.B. crystallized. Willgoose added a percussionist, who goes by Wrigglesworth, and later brought in a visuals specialist named Mr. B. Willgoose also called the British Film Institute to formalize his use of its materials. A mutually beneficial relationship has since developed: the Institute gives Willgoose generous access and royalty rates; in return, P.S.B. serves as an ad-hoc publicity engine for some of the archive’s lesser-known holdings.
Onstage, Willgoose and Wrigglesworth dress in bow ties and tweed jackets, like a pair of Oxbridge dons. Like many facets of P.S.B., the costumes walk a fine line between pastiche and tribute. Via Skype from England, where the band is touring with the Kaiser Chiefs, Willgoose told me that the goal of the Wodehousian names and getups is to “maintain an air of mystery.” Neither of the performers speaks or sings during the show, and all communication between songs comes from pre-programmed samples. This self-effacement, Willgoose said, is intended as an ego check, and as a way of directing the audience’s focus to the music and accompanying visuals.
The group’s first record was a 2012 EP called “The War Room,” whose songs draw on footage from the early years of the Second World War. The highlight is the up-tempo “Spitfire,” about the design and construction of the fighter plane that helped hold off the Luftwaffe during the Battle of Britain. The samples in the song are taken from “The First of the Few,” a 1942 feature film starring Leslie Howard as the plane’s designer, R. J. Mitchell. Though Willgoose says that P.S.B.’s songs should be open to interpretation, “Spitfire” is an unambiguous celebration of British gumption and ingenuity. Elsewhere, the EP is more sombre. The opening track, “If War Should Come,” ends with a recording of Neville Chamberlain saying, “This country is at war.” “Waltz for George” relates the fate of the British Expeditionary Force at Dunkirk, where Willgoose’s great-uncle died.
A year later, Public Service Broadcasting released its first full-length album, with a title that sounds like a mission statement: “Inform—Educate—Entertain.” More thematically and musically varied than “The War Room,” the album is uneven, and shows some of the hazards of P.S.B.’s approach. The least successful songs appear to use archival material ironically, or as a means of poking fun at the past. “The Now Generation,” which is constructed around fashion clips, features such vapid declarations as “Out of the past and into the future comes this news, and the news is pleats!” “Signal 30” sets an American highway-safety video from the fifties to a hard-rock beat. “You’re driving a little too fast and have a false sense of confidence,” the narrator says. “Watch it!”
The album’s more reflective and subdued numbers are stronger. “Night Mail,” about the overnight postal-delivery system, includes a trance-like excerpt from W. H. Auden’s poem of the same title. “Lit Up” fuses dreamy synthesizers with an infamous recording of a drunken BBC commentator describing the 1937 royal review of the British Fleet at Spithead. It would have been easy to turn Thomas Woodrooffe’s inebriated rambling into a jape, but the song slowly builds to an almost mystical conclusion. The album’s best track, the majestic, uplifting “Everest,” centers upon early efforts to climb the world’s highest peak. It concludes with the narrator quoting George Mallory’s famous reason for scaling the mountain: “Because it is there.”
That phrase turns up again on P.S.B.’s new album, “The Race for Space,” which was released Tuesday. The new recording opens with an excerpt from President John F. Kennedy’s 1962 speech at Rice University advocating for a manned space program. At the climax of his oration, Kennedy cites Mallory, saying, “Well, space is there, and we’re going to climb it.” Like “The War Room,” “The Race for Space” benefits from its focus on a single topic. It is also a welcome shift away from what one critic called P.S.B.’s penchant for “Keep Calm and Carry On” nostalgia.
The first single from the new album is a funk-driven dance number called “Gagarin.” The video for the song, which depicts Willgoose and Wrigglesworth dressed in space suits, is a giddy delight. Other songs, such as “The Other Side” and “Go!,” honor the feats, both technological and human, that propelled man into space. The exuberance is tempered by “Fire in the Cockpit,” which features an account of the 1967 deaths of three astronauts during rehearsals for the launch of Apollo 1.
The record’s emotional climax is “Valentina,” a salute to Valentina Tereshkova, the first woman in space. There is minimal spoken-word sampling in the song, and a guest appearance by the ethereal British folk duo the Smoke Fairies. The song also hints at a possible new direction for P.S.B.: Willgoose said that his contact at the British Film Institute had recently inherited a collection from Estonian Television that includes footage of everything from Sergei Korolev, the founder of the U.S.S.R.’s space program, to Laika, the Soviet space dog.
