Sondre Lerche Would Rather Sing In English
Twenty-year-old Norwegian singer/songwriter Sondre Lerche welcomes the acclaim he's beginning to receive in the United States, even if most critics do focus primarily on his age.
"It's really something I can't control, because I'm just as old as I am," said the soft-spoken Lerche by phone recently from his home in Bergen, Norway. "If people are excited about my age, I just hope once they get over that they still enjoy the music for what that is, because the music is more of a constant value.... It's [ the fact that I'm young and have made an album they like] just something that is maybe slightly more impressive in the beginning.... Maybe it sells records. Who knows?"
Lerche's debut album, Faces Down (Astralwerks), released last fall, succeeds not only for his expressive songwriting, but for its catholic sound, which favors string and brass-heavy orchestrations along with a variety of rhythmic experiments. The album appeared on many critics' "best of" lists for 2002.
"I listened a lot to different types of music that gave me certain ideas as to which direction I wanted the arrangements to be in — everything thing from Burt Bacharach to Beck, and further on to more psychedelic Brazilian stuff," Lerche explained. "Basically, it's very important for me to work with people who share these influences and who I communicate easily with."
Lerche will embark on his debut tour of the United States, playing clubs and opening for Nada Surf. The tour kicks off at the Bowery Ballroom in New York on Feb. 17 and wraps in Los Angeles on March 10.
For the tour, Lerche will perform solo. Songs that feature ornate arrangements on the album will be heard as stripped-down, acoustic numbers — which is what they were like when Lerche first wrote them. "I think first and foremost the most important thing is for me to write a song that is completely self-reliant when you play it solo," he said. "So, I just try to write something that is 100% in its own self, and from there on you can go on and arrange the song in any direction that you want to, but the song is still the essence of it all.
"First I write the song for the guitar," he continued. "Then I do the opposite when I go to the studio and I make these widescreen recordings of it, and then, go back to where I'm now, and take the songs back to the solo format [for touring]. But still you can't help being influenced by the arrangements that you have heard — and which I've done in the studio. So you take that with you as well and try to compensate for what is lost from the album by just trying to be an orchestra in one guitar. It sounds probably a bit dangerous, but usually it works. It works. So I hope for good times when I come over."
The language barrier might prove challenging for some non-American artists, but Lerche said he feels comfortable writing in English. "I've mainly always focused on writing in English. I suppose it's simply because the music that I listen to is mostly in English," he said. "For me it felt very natural to sing in English, and very unnatural to sing in Norwegian.... It's not a very musical language.... I want to be able to communicate through my music with as many people as possible. If I had made a Norwegian album called Ansikter Ned — that's Faces Down in Norwegian — I suppose I wouldn't be talking to you."
Lerche's proclivity for melody also sets him apart from other singer/songwriters. "It's very seldom that I relate to other singer/songwriters because I think most singer/songwriters are really quite conservative with the arrangements," he said. "I really didn't want to sound like this troubadour, because I knew that the songs were good and I really wanted to dress them up in nice clothes."
For info about Lerche's U.S. tour dates, please go to the official Sondre Lerche Web site. — Brian Orloff [Wednesday, Feb.12, 2003]
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