PROLOGUE
If you’ve missed Sondre Lerche the first time round, the release of « Two Way Monologue » is the perfect excuse to find out whether he is more wunder than kid.
For those who don’t know him yet, Lerche belongs to this caste of brats who once they’ve picked up a guitar, start strumming it night and day locked up in their rooms, until one day they come out, set camp in the living-room to their parents’ despair, play maddening little tunes on the piano with three fingers, before taking it just a stage further and walking out to take over the world.
Unlike the legions of young people who may have successfully gone through these phases but ended up streetwalking Tin Pan Alley with bad hair and bitter stories, Lerche only had time to hop candidly before being snapped up by Virgin Records at the tender age of 17. A few EPs ensued, followed by his debut LP « Faces Down »
, which went Gold in his native Norway and received a fair amount of critical interest elsewhere. Taken at face value, « Faces Down »
may not have that much to be excited about. But Lerche’s obvious potential shining through his contagious adolescent impetuosity and precocious mastery of the pop language couldn’t be ignored. If anything, « Faces Down »
felt like the most endearing promise of things to come.
Surviving the pressure of an early success and taking less than five years to release a second album, all before the age of 21, is an achievement in itself. « Two Way Monologue » features Lerche as a young man, perfecting his art and pop wizardry.
MONOLOGUES
The album opens with a gentle instrumental, which ends on a soaring note that Lerche catches mid-air to launch into « Track you Down » . The bare simplicity of the first two verses, featuring Lerche’s intimate vocal style and acoustic guitar, is later complemented with perfect timing by the bass and drums, while Lerche’s voice ascends into delicious heights before landing with perfect aplomb onto the undulating chorus. The boy must have spent long nights studying the delicate map of musical pleasure, so much the song demonstrates his ability to press all the right buttons at the right time, building and releasing tension in a perfect flow. In comparison, « On the tower » sounds like a lazy concession to easy-listening, bringing to mind the bland pastel dots of a now defunct airline’s logo.
Things seem to get back on track with the eponymous « Two way monologue . After an acoustic start punctuated by a voluntarily awkward pause, the song goes into full pop swing, hopping like a love child between the Divine Comedy and the Cardigans. Somehow Lerche deemed it necessary to throw a spanner in the works, by introducing a superfluous bridge which trails into an interminable digression. The tongue-in-cheek end just about saves the day.
With « Days that are over » , Lerche starts spelling out his knowledge of old-school orchestral pop arrangements, using every single instrument in the repertoire, before exiting with an organ outro which brings to mind beloved children’s programmes. The following track, « Wet Ground » is another stylistic exercise: Lerche tries out the sailor song genre with a feeble attempt to make his voice sound leathery, then turns to the Hollywood Xmas carol, before making a modest homage to the genius of Brian Wilson and the Beach Boys through vocal harmonies and distinctive « chings! chings! » . Follows what feels like the album filler, with little direction and no tension: Lerche can « pa-papapa » all he wants, he is not able to salvage « Counter Spark » .
As you are about to lose heart, « It’s over » grabs you by the back of the neck. The song stands out from every point of view as an instant classic, thanks to the simplicity of the piano, string and French horn arrangements digging deep in the best of George Martin’s legacy, all supporting a beautifully crafted melody with lovely heights and variations. As if things couldn’t get any better, « Stupid Memory » rolls in with its contagious finger-picking, good-natured bass, hillbilly pedal steel and the presence a mysterious French lulling female. Somehow it suddenly feels that driving a Volvo on the way to Trondheim contains as much romantic road movie potential as riding the odd Mustang on Route66.
Enters “It’s too Late” , a typical drowning circus tune, with whirling electronics, out of time piano and waltzing strings, which like most songs of its kind, fails to really engage. “It’s our job” seems to hesitate between soul, 80s MOR rock, lament and country, and ends up like a bad head with three simultaneous haircuts. The album finally closes on “Maybe you’re Gone” , which demonstrates once more if it were necessary, that things never work as well for Lerche as when the arrangements are stripped to the bare minimum. Even the inevitable album accordion outro magically works.
EPILOGUE?
Has Sondre Lerche managed to live up to the expectations? Musically, “Two Way Monologue” has its ups and downs, but thanks to the selective nature of memory, we are more inclined to remember the good parts. Lyrically however, Lerche’s clumsiness comes in the way. I had to struggle to obliterate the lyrics to do justice to the musical quality of the album. In « Faces Down” , the lyrics might have been more generic, but they were also more discreet. Here, Lerche aims at the attractively obscure, the twisted, irreverence and realism, but lands himself with Sixth Form poetry likely to be found on English class tables. In a Norwegian school. “If I translate you wrong, when I complete your song” . I couldn’t have put it better myself.
There is a mixture of intentions lost in translation (“cos I’m optionless and turkey-free and blind”, “when we cry in between our cheeks” ) and a patchy copy&paste from classic pop lines, which look out of context in such an exotic environment. On top of it all, Lerche is caught up between artificiality and spontaneity. Under the circumstances, the latter would seem the safest option. Yet we hardly get the feeling he writes about things close to this heart, except when he exclaims, “I shouldn’t have to spell my name” . The other option of course, is for the songs to be sung in Norwegian. Or for the listener not to understand the lyrics at all. Which means that the album fully deserves a great career on the continent, where the songs can be enjoyed for their sheer musical quality.
And for those like me who are obsessed with language, let us follow the advise of my Japanese friend Hiroshi, who recently sent me a demo tape he’d made. He enclosed a single A4 sheet and typed in big letters this simple message, stripped of any further comment:
“It is difficult to make my idea into language.
Therefore, I continue composition from now on.
Moreover, please listen to the music of when or me”.
That is just what I shall do.
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