[rating=2.50]
Sondre Lerche’s latest new self-titled release is a musical kaleidoscope filled with a plethora of stops, starts, and turns. Filtered through his trademark classical pop sensibilities, Lerche’s album will ring a few bells of familiarity to listeners. He pays homage to McCartney-esque Beatles: the dreamy “Coliseum Town”, Belle and Sebastian theatrical leanings: the lead single, “Private Caller”, and even hits a Chris Martin type falsetto on “Domino” before borrowing Wilco’s searing guitar squeal for the song’s ending.
The musical similarities to other artists tend to get in the way of complete engrossment in the album. Rather than concentrating on Lerche’s often amusing turns of verse (“Her name is not Crucial/Could be Catherine”) and examining the songs on their own merit, one instead gets bogged down in figuring out songs that sound similar. And that’s too bad, because Lerche is a fine pop singer with a pleasantly smooth voice that suits his wistful observations on life quite fine, and in contrast to past albums, here, he seems comfortable trying on different styles and arrangements from song to song. He sounds best on tracks like “Living Dangerously” and “Red Flags”, two tunes that feature Lerche’s deft wordplay balanced between snappy almost jazz-like grooves. This type of arrangement is in Lerche’s wheelhouse and gets the most mileage out of his pop leanings. They’re catchy tunes that would fit in nicely in trendy television ads or within the storyline of prime-time network fare.
Lerche’s musical styling and willingness to mix up sounds keep the album from being monotonous but on the other hand prevents it from displaying any urgency that would make the album totally memorable. It is a good summation of his career thus far and will be of great interest to longtime fans but probably won’t win over a ton of new converts
