There was no front: For the first half-minute of "Don't Be Shallow", Lerche was missing notes, singing out of key, just a complete mess. The crowd-- late twenty-somethings mostly there to see headliner Nada Surf play that one song they do-- was at a loss, too, caught between rants of insobriety and deep Langley School-ish sympathies: Lerche is young and clearly nervous, and I probably should stop being an asshole and maybe try being kind and supportive. Slowly everything clicked though, and Lerche commanded a degree of vocal control and rubato that rivaled Ted Leo solo performances. And now the crowd was at a complete loss. Lerche's kitschy youth appeal had earned their sympathy, yet now they actually liked what he was playing.
"It might be the most laidback album of lush pop I've ever heard." --Rob Mitchum on Lerche's debut LP, Faces Down
It's true, and perhaps Faces Down was unoffensive to a fault. Lerche's songs were a bit, as Mitchum went on to say, "EZ-indie." Lerche knows the right buttons to push when he wants to charm us, which is great, but perhaps not as impressive or interesting if we discern the mechanism behind the charm: subconsciously, we are not in awe of Lerche's skill as a songwriter, but simply rejoice in the melodies themselves. Says Lerche himself, half-proud, half-ashamed, "The tunes on Faces Down poured out of me... beyond my control."
Lerche is, if anything, much more in control on Two Way Monologue. This is not to say the songs are any less natural or charming-- melodies undoubtedly poured out of him, but Lerche has much more of a hand in crafting these melodies into truly sophisticated pop songs. (Keep in mind that he'd written many of the tracks on Faces Down when he was just 16.) Lerche is consistently experimenting with alternate chord voicings and more complex song structures, not to mention broadening the scope of his production ethic. Nevertheless, he refuses to sacrifice the integrity of his melodies. With five more years on him, he's also cut much of the sugary and predictable melodrama, and his lyrical tendencies, with often charming flubbed English phraseology, have matured considerably. As a whole, then, the songs are less immediately gratifying than those on Faces Down, but any demand made by Two Way Monologue betrays the extent to which Lerche has grown as a songwriter. If the listener isn't eventually caught in swoons, at the least he will respect the degree of Lerche's refined artifice.
Nick Drake's influence seems to play a larger role here than on Lerche's last LP. After "Love You", a baroque recast of Faces Down's "Things You Call Fate", Lerche begins "Track You Down" in falsetto, accompanied by his own strums, which, for all his solo concert appearances, he has done so rarely on his recordings. Even lyrically, Lerche touches upon Drake's celestial territory: "Down came the sky/ And all you did was blink," and perhaps a more explicit confrontation, "So why am I writing to the moon?" The song showcases the latitude of Two Way Monologue's production styles, which spans the delicate voice/guitar balance to the massive swells of straightforward, studio-slick chamber-pop to track stuffing reminiscent of Beck's Midnite Vultures.
On other songs, Lerche's struggle with his natural inclinations, and his wish to make his songs more interesting, becomes clearer. The sparsely accompanied "On the Tower", "Days That Are Over", and "Counter Spark" all start with verses as straightforward as those on Faces Down, but find their maturity in some intensely dense and beautiful bridges, rich with alternately voiced chords and swells of strings and background vocals. "Counter Spark" itself sports a B-section of "ba-ba-ba bah-ba" that subtly pokes fun at Lerche's melody on "You Know So Well".
Elsewhere, Lerche situates himself in two distinct but equally rich 60s rock ballad traditions. Perhaps in light of all the Smile talk, songs like "Wet Ground" recall Beach Boys barbershop harmonies and tongue-in-cheek inflections (e.g. "alar-Ming, dar-Ling"). Meanwhile, the strings and florid instrumentation of "It's Over"-- not to mention the restrained balladic tone of Lerche as he hits and holds his highest recorded note in beautiful falsetto-- situate the song in the shadow of Abbey Road-era Beatles. Admittedly, these aren't Lerche's sophistications so much as they are Lerche appropriating the sophistications of his new touchstones. Still, Lerche attempts them and is to a great extent successful in his own right, never appearing a simple mouthpiece of his muses.
Lerche's true accomplishment on Two Way Monologue comes with the title track. It's the album's longest, and encapsulates his stage presence, his songwriting ability, the progress he's made since Faces Down, and the wide variety of production he's employed on Two Way Monologue. The track begins nervously as a solo acoustic song, before instruments gradually begin to fill in the empty space until it's stuffed with distinct acoustic and electric guitar lines, baritone saxophone hits, and synth hooks of various vintage and vocode. At this point, Lerche could retire the "Two Way Monologue" as just another great pop song; but at about the 3:30 mark, as the song retreats into a quiet outro, an acoustic piano and guitar refuse to halt their vamp, and work up enough energy to explode back into the chorus once more, making for the album's most exciting transition.
At once a compliment and a criticism, Two Way Monologue may be too dense for one sitting. It engages in the kind of pop overload that characterized Faces Down, though here, it's the melody as well as Lerche's ideas that overwhelm the listener. Malapropisms forgiven ("When tears are pretzels pouring down each time/ The sweetness is returning/ At times when you appreciate that you survived"-- what?), Lerche's lyrics are flat but never distracting. In the end, though, Two Way Monologue bears witness to the growth of an already talented young songwriter for whom the title "talented young songwriter" seems quite inadequate.
