1st single from 2nd album should be classic pop song

The entertainer said he wanted to leave air within each song.
By JOHN PATRICK GATTA
VINDICATOR CORRESPONDENT
"Two Way Monologue," the title track and first single from Sondre Lerche's second album, has all the makings of a classic pop song.
The number contains the requisite hook-laden melody with a chorus that just sits in your head and stays there.
And most important for Lerche, though its seductive simplicity offers a nod to the casualness displayed by the Beatles, the track constantly brings small additions to the mix in a purposeful approach to avoid the genre's clich & eacute;s.
Only problem is, as the Norwegian-born singer-songwriter admits during a recent phone interview, it's not representative of the rest of the album.
This does nothing to dismiss the album's other 11 tracks, just a matter of a small mental adjustment needed in order to appreciate the finely crafted pop that echoes the sophisticated side of Elvis Costello and Burt Bacharach with a little Brazilian flavors of Milton Nascimento thrown in for good measure.
"That's something that I really wanted to do as opposed to my first record, which was packed with ideas and colors and all kinds of everything. With this, what I wanted to leave in it was air within each song. I didn't want to stuff the songs with ideas. I'd rather leave stuff open so that there would be a certain calmness about it."
Biography
Producing a work that sounds mature and melodically exquisite reflects the experience and influences of the 22-year-old Lerche. Playing the guitar at age 8 led to his writing his first tune at 14. While in his teens, he performed at a local club in his hometown of Bergen.
Originally drawn to music via the synth pop of his native countrymen, A-Ha, he quickly moved on to the more refined sounds created by Brian Wilson, Cole Porter, Costello and Bacharach.
"I got into Elvis Costello, just about the time he was releasing his record with Burt Bacharach. That's the way I got into Burt Bacharach. I went to the store to get [Costello's] " This Year's Model" and it was the same week he released "Painted from Memories" [with Bacharach]. Two very opposite ends of his career, but I got it as well.
"I liked both equally much, which led me to then getting more of Burt Bacharach's older stuff, which partly I knew from my mother who would play it endlessly. From there on I just went on to discover his classic songwriting. He also had a lot of Brazilian in his music, which was a new way to get into some of the bossa nova stuff that I already knew from learning it when I took guitar lessons when I was a kid. Suddenly, you get a new approach of things 'cause you have a new reference to it, which makes it more understandable or appealing."
Finding the positive
Before he reached his second decade, Lerche already released several EPs and a full-length album. A major star in his country and Europe, he's still grasping for a larger public profile in the United States. Rather than being irked at his smaller commercial profile here, he finds the positive in the situation.
Earlier this year, Lerche toured with the same group of musicians who appeared on "Two Way Monologue." This time around, he performs solo with his opening act, The Golden Republic, joining him on several numbers.
"On the most part here, people are really listening and very quiet. When I do solo shows, you really need that space to bring out the dynamics of the song, and that's when you want to illustrate different shades of quiet 'cause you can get a lot through with doing that and going from quiet to really quiet to silence. You can only do that if the audiences are receptive for that kind of thing."