New Sondre Lerche (With handy review!)

[Waterless]

For the un-initiated, Sondre Lerche (Pronounced Sohn-drey Ler-key) is a very young (as in 20, but had a record deal at 16, the filthy motherfucker) Norwegian artist that broke out into the music world two years ago with his Faces Down album, with several EPs following in Europe and the states. He's got a great poppy sorta feel without sounding ghey and whiney - I've yet to hear him whine, actually - and his immediate and clear influences are The Beatles, with some Elvis Costelloe (shit, spelling is probably way off) overlay. I really don't do his sound justice, so I suggest you hit www.sondrelerche.com and check him out yourself. Plus, for the ladies and the ghey homosex boys, he's also "I'd let him do me in the butt without a rubber" cute.

His latest ablum, Two Way Monologue, is an interesting and worthy follow-up to his first, and in many ways you can feel his transition from point a to point b. This is most apparent with the opening song, which has a suspiciously familiar baseline, probably because it's almost exactly the same as "The Things You Call Fate," to a note, but it's got great strings and a French Horn in it, and really leads into the second song perfectly. The first six songs, including the excellent namesake of the album, are really a treat, and bits of the old are mixed with the new in a very stylish manner. But, then, he throws a curveball with his solo work "Wet Ground," a really strange song that feels like it can't decide if it's a barbershop quartet, a lullebye, or the single from the latest Fivel movie. It's decent, but, really, for a big Sondre fan like myself, it's disappointing to hear him put this song out, when he's got plenty of better, and more appropriate work in EPs just laying around. Oh well. The surprisingly good experiment with country music "Stupid Memory" is a wonderful song, being a fairly blue song without being incessently whiney like most bands seem to be doing these days, and you can really imagine this apparently grizzled, jaded 20-year old drinking hard liquor at a seedy bar. The final four songs finish the album nicely, with only one more thankfully short disappointment, and the final song (with a hint of Frenchie accordian, by the way) is actually very pleasant.

Overall, I give it a 7.5/10, compared to his 9/10 for Faces Down. A wonderful follow-up album that shows his clear maturation as a artist - he wrote most of the stuff on Faces Down at like 15 and 16 - yet has some bumps here and there that end up sadly detracting from the overall work. Still, a great album from start to finish. Good work Sondre.