The Race for Space (album)
| The Race for Space | ||||
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| Studio album by Public Service Broadcasting | ||||
| Released | 23 February 2015 | |||
| Recorded | Jacamar Studios, The Pool Studios, Abbey Road Studios | |||
| Genre | ||||
| Length | 43:40 | |||
| Label | Test Card Recordings | |||
| Public Service Broadcasting chronology | ||||
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| Singles from The Race for Space (album) | ||||
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| Professional ratings | |
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| Aggregate scores | |
| Source | Rating |
| Metacritic | 73/100 |
| Review scores | |
| Source | Rating |
| The Arts Desk |   |
| The Austin Chronicle | |
| Clash | 7/10 |
| DIY | |
| Drowned in Sound | 8/10 |
| The Guardian | |
| The Irish Times | |
| The Independent | positive |
| The Observer | |
| State | |
The Race for Space is the second studio album by British alternative group Public Service Broadcasting. Working with sound samples from the British Film Institute, the album relives the story of the American and Soviet space race from 1957-1972. The opening track features the speech by John F. Kennedy on September 12, 1962 at Rice University.
To launch the album, the band played two concerts on 26 and 27 February 2015 at the National Space Centre in Leicester and went on to complete a 14-date tour of the UK and Ireland to support the album. The band have expressed concern in the past about playing the whole album cover to cover live, due to the subject matter of track 4 ("Fire in the Cockpit") but did so for the first time at Manchester Science Festival in October 2016.
The album reached No. 11 in the UK chart and No. 1 in the UK Indie Albums Chart the week following its release. The vinyl edition was the 5th highest selling record of 2015 in the UK.
The events covered on the album include the launch of Sputnik 1, the Apollo 1 fire, and the Vostok 1, Voskhod 2, Vostok 6, Apollo 8, Apollo 11 and Apollo 17 missions.
Upon its release, The Race for Space was met with largely positive reviews from music critics. Most reviews praised the band's choice of theme and commented heavily on the album's use of tone and instrumentation to depict certain events in the space race. While most critics unanimously praised upbeat tracks such as "Gagarin" and "The Other Side", they were somewhat divided on other tracks on the album, such as "Fire in the Cockpit" and "Valentina", which drew, if any, minor criticism. In comparison to the band's debut album, Inform-Educate-Entertain, critics also believed that The Race for Space had elevated the band from a "novelty act", and praised the album as a concept album that improves on its predecessor. At Metacritic, which assigns a normalized rating out of 100 to reviews from mainstream critics, the album received an average score of 73, which indicates "Generally favorable reviews ", based on 12 reviews as of December 2015.
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