"Tin Pan Alley is gone," Bob Dylan famously once said. "I put an end to it." Good thing Mr. Zimmerman didn't copy us all on that self-mythologizing memo. The sophisticated rhyming and melodic razzmatazz of Cole Porter and his Broadway/vaudeville ilk may be gone, but they're not... ah, forget it. Norwegian romantic Sondre Lerche, more often known for sweet-voiced chamber-pop, is having his punchdrunk Dylan-at-Newport moment.
Sure, nearly every sensitive singer-songwriter eventually suffers from rocker envy. Blame it on the burning jibes leveled at soft-voiced acoustic stiffs from James Taylor to James Blunt (and even John Mayer wants desperately for you to know he can cover Jimi Hendrix). When Lerche told Rolling Stone his fourth album would have a new, "primitive" sound, it was pretty clear where the dude'd been gathering his moss-remover. Sure enough, Phantom Punch places Lerche's vibrant melodies behind a veneer of modern indie rock. This extra electric charge isn't enough to displace the tag Rob Mitchum first applied in 2002: "EZ-indie."
In the wake of 2006's unabashedly Chet Baker-inspired Duper Sessions, it's nice to hear Lerche again seeking his own muse. If only it didn't come out sounding so much like everybody else's. Sharp-elbowed rockers like "Face the Blood" and "The Tape" careen in stark contrast to even the liveliest Two Way Monologue arrangements-- but do we really need another Arctic Monkeys clone? Anyway, while distortion roams freely compared to previous Lerche albums, producer Tony Hoffer (Air, Beck, Belle and Sebastian) keeps the proceedings too polite to hint at any actual rock rebelliousness. Finale "Happy Birthday Girl" is the most ridiculous offender, cribbing Ride's shimmer in a plodding act of rote shoegaze revivalism.
Good thing Lerche still packs his newfound Punch with breezy, old-fashioned melodies. On charming acoustic love song "After All", guitar harmonics stretch a broad sonic background over soft, galloping drums. Reportedly written for Lerche's now-wife, "She's Fantastic" is a giddy "Sorry, ladies," while the title track works a fuzzy "Drive My Car" guitar riff and disco hi-hats into waltz time.
It can be petty to criticize the lyrics of someone composing in a non-native language, and indeed Lerche has made modest progress here. When he admits, "I have done so many incomprehensible things," on catchy but slick likely single "Say It All", he sounds way too nice to be speaking the truth. And that's probably the point: He's describing the everyday incomprehensibility of fuckups we make by just being human. "Well, Well, Well" makes a rock'n'roll virtue of such simplicity: "When I see you baby/ It's well, well, well." Then again, Lerche can't resist a few clunkers. "I can conjugate myself," he insists in the falsetto-laden chorus of "John, Let Me Go".
As Lerche persists in his search for a distinctive style, at least he needn't also go looking for a voice. As a singer, he's a bit less delicate here than on more youthful, Nick Drake-tinged outings, but Lerche's jazzy melodic zest remains inimitably central to his appeal. What his songs must lack is a face-- whether the hammy grin of Tin Pan Alley or a young Dylan's brilliant, inscrutable sneer. While Lerche remains a promising young songwriter, Phantom Punch doesn't quite fulfill that promise.
