The most notable constant in Sondre Lerche's career so far has been change. The restless Norwegian has a wide range of musical curiosities, and in 10 years and seven albums he's covered quite a bit of ground, from the subdued, Nick Drake-inspired folk of Faces Down to the Chet Baker jazz of The Duper Sessions to the harder rock of Phantom Punch. Perhaps his most representative work to date has been the soundtrack to the largely forgotten Steve Carell flick Dan in Real Life, and that's primarily because it shuffles new tracks and scene-setting instrumentals among songs from his previous albums, as if Lerche meant to take stock of his own past. His range is certainly respectable, but also a bit precocious, as if such diversity were an end in itself. So when he self-titles an album-- especially his seventh full-length-- it can't just be out of laziness or lack of creativity.
Whether intentional or not, Sondre Lerche does present something like a defining sound, with all the traits that have threaded throughout his albums over the years: the slightly off-key croon, the meticulous attention to arrangement, the emphasis on melody over all else, the impeccable choice of backing musicians (including Vetiver's Bob Parins on harmonica, Midlake's McKenzie Smith on drums, and Lerche's stepfather-in-law on accordion). There are nods to Brill Building formalism, 1970s singer-songwriter fare, subdued bossa nova, and polite power pop, each integrated studiously into the whole. The result might be called indie AOR: intelligent, tasteful, largely unobtrusive, certainly knowledgeable of pop history. It would surprise exactly no one if he ended up recording with Norah Jones (that's not a slam: say what you will about her music, but she has pretty solid taste in collaborators).
Perhaps the most distinguishing characteristic of Sondre Lerche is how willing he is to simply let these songs devour themselves: to fall apart or fade away in unexpected ways. "Nevermind the Typos" descends from legible script to scrawled handwriting, as the drums, bass, strings, and guitar play against instead of with one another, and "Tied Up to the Tide" closes on an angular accordion solo that's one of the album's most intriguingly jarring moments. This self-destructive impulse makes for an interesting contrast to Lerche's highly organized and precisely arranged pop, but he relegates it to a few asides without really pursuing that chaos-against-order friction. He's simply too bound to order, such that even the runaway chorus of "Private Caller" sounds like it knows exactly where it's running away to. The drama of "Domino" and closer "When the River" sounds prescribed, too scripted for a performer whose live shows suggest a spontaneity that's impossible to recreate on record. For all the mission-statement confidence that its title exudes, Sondre Lerche sounds strangely divided: It's too pristine and too scattershot.
