Faces Down
Sondre Lerche
(Astral Works)

Nineteen years old and Norwegian must be a pretty fine feeling these days, what with the stateside labels sniffing around, but Lerche is something altogether different from the rock ’n’ roll Swedes across the way. Faces Down is sweet and light as summer air, a spun-sugar confection laced with enough complexity to keep away the cavities. Despite his tender age, Lerche’s tracks evidence an enviable musical knowledge, the marks of a man who has obviously spent his formative years nose-deep in the record stacks. You can hear the Aja loud and clear on the opening track "Dead Passengers," but it’s not just Steely he’s riffing on here. Faces Down also echoes with the reverberations of repeated listens to early Costello and an obsession with golden-era Warwick/Bacharach. Lerche is also just as well-versed in the here and now, and the album resonates with Mellow/Air experimentation, Radiohead-inflected heart-wrenchers and some obvious nods to Beck, from whom Lerche borrows an unapologetic quirkiness and an audiophile’s affection for a catchy beat.

Not that the kid doesn’t kick his own style. His voice (when he’s not doing his best Thom Yorke wail) is one-of-a-kind; high and pure one moment then swooping down to the low and raw. It’s expressive, but not showy and clipped at the edges, with a strange and appealing lilt that must be what a Norwegian accent sounds like. It’s matched prettily with a cute female vocalist on "Modern Nature," a kind of revamped "Honey Pie," all giggling and childlike and 20s-toned, the kind of song you can tapdance to, which in my mind is always a bonus.

Sondre gets sensitive on "On and Off Again" and "Side Two" and a touch low-fi electro on the U.S. bonus track "Rosebud," but for the most part the direction on Faces Down is up up up. Yet miraculously never cloying. Lerche knows his way around a beat, and all those positive vibrations he’s emanating are coming through without self-consciousness or neohippie insincerity. Faces Down contains the kind of youthful hope that’s infectious. Lerche is giddy and delighted and altogether glad to be young and talented and good-looking, and somehow you won’t hate him for it.