SONDRE LERCHE, ACROBATS

In 2022, I called Sondre Lerche’s Avatars of Love the biggest, boldest, and most complex album he had ever made. I also called Lerche one of the best songwriters of his generation and said he had simply never been better. By the end of the year, it was my favorite album of 2022. So I was particularly interested to hear where he would go next.

On Acrobats, Lerche doesn’t try to make another Avatars of Love. Where that album explored something more elusive and uncertain about love, Lerche has described Acrobats as more concrete, an album about real people, real bodies, and actually finding love. But that happiness exists alongside something much darker. Lerche has talked about the strange disconnect of finding love and peace in his own life while looking at a world filled with suffering. How do you write a love song in the middle of all of that? For Lerche, falling in love itself begins to feel like an act of defiance.

Musically, there is a connection between the two albums. While making Avatars of Love, Lerche began experimenting with melodies that were simple and tuneful but also elastic enough to accommodate however many words he wanted to put into them. He continues that approach on Acrobats. “Follow the River” may be the best example, a nine minute song built around Lerche’s memories of a romantic summer in 2021. He fills it with the small things that suddenly take on greater meaning when you fall in love, music, food, cocktails, even the way the sun hits the street at a particular hour. Lerche calls it both an anthem and a travelogue.

Lerche also spent part of the years between these albums performing as Christian in Moulin Rouge! in Oslo, an experience that gave him a different perspective on how something musically big and theatrical can still feel sincere. On Acrobats, Lerche goes big, with strings, orchestras, jazz musicians, and arrangements that can become huge. But at the center of it all is Lerche’s songwriting, which is so intentional. For example, “Little Kids” took him two years of writing and rewriting before he felt he had found words worthy of the music.

More than twenty years into his career, Lerche is still following the idea he had when he made his first album as a teenager, that music should give him the freedom to go wherever he wants. After Avatars of Love, I knew that album would be hard to follow. Acrobats doesn’t try to repeat it. Instead, Lerche takes another turn and delivers another standout album.