Review: Sondre Lerche - Please
By Marc Blanc, Contributor
[Mona; 2014]
Rating: 6.5/10
Key Tracks: “Bad Law,” “Crickets”
How much of a compliment is it when someone says, “This artist should be more famous?” Could they be attesting to the musician’s skill, or just suggesting the music is simple and accessible? Norwegian “café-pop” veteran Sondre Lerche has stayed off American charts largely due to his location, but after seven albums, he’s made it to Brooklyn. His sound is not alien to US airwaves, resembling something between Sufjan Stevens and OneRepublic.
Lerche is too multifaceted to ever make a predictable pop record. To begin with, Please is an album entirely about his divorce last year. As visiting a land unknown, the listener can’t afford to settle in when first hearing this LP, lest they not see the next uppercut. Unfortunately, Lerche gets stuck on melodic conventions of Top 40 hits. A tragic castration, the truly talented artist prevents himself from fathering what could have been an era-defining breakup album.
Weddings between the old and new permeate this divorce record beginning with “Bad Law,” whose opening chords resurrect some disco ghost before crashing into digital chaos in one of the many sudden turns that bring the album to its shining moments.
Beneath the synth and heavy distortion of “Sentimentalist” is buried a dreamy harp, adding to the image of Lerche as a classical Nordic hero-poet, forced to choose between unhappiness in marriage and unhappiness in loneliness.
“Don’t I owe you my love? / I’ll be damned if I fight / I’ll be damned if I don’t.”
A jazz-trained musician, Lerche relies heavily on masterful use of varied instruments; as impressive as it is, the sadness in the lyrics is inevitably dulled.
After the two opening numbers, the record begins to address a love lost. Yet tone and emotional poignancy are often compromised by experimentation and “Everything is Awesome”-level opti-melodies. With its gimmicky drums and sing-along chorus that drag me back to the time I saw OneRepublic, “Legends” turns a feeling shared by many disappointed romantics into white iHeartRadio noise.
True to the album title, Lerche sounds bewilderingly polite on “Lucky Guy,” a track so tame it raises the question of whether he was ever that invested in his ex-wife to begin with. His market has to be in mind; the unwritten laws of modern pop ostensively state an album should maximize its playable songs.
There’s a percentage of negativity pop artists can’t exceed if they want airplay. Most of the negativity on Please is taken up by the lyrical content, leaving little room for pessimistic playing.
Although difficult to emotionally follow, any part of this album that achieves substantial success will quench pop’s drought. What a delight it’d be to get in the car and be surprised with a backwards saxophone in “Logging Off,” the potential anthem for broken-up Millennials; how satisfying to nod along to the heavy breathing on “Crickets.”
Unfortunately, Please's specs of originality won’t be picked up by the common market and Sondre Lerche will not be permitted to fulfill his potential as a great radio revisionist. What's left is an album that feels stuck between indie experimentalism and lust for airplay.
