Sondre Lerche Album Ranking 2024

Sondre Lerche was the first artist I listened to that I had actually discovered on my own (rather than being introduced to by my family) and introduced me to alternative, more esoteric types of music. His music still resonates strongly with me today, ten years after becoming a fan, and I’ve made no mistake in still calling him my favorite artist and biggest inspiration after all this time. While I spent this past decade exploring many other artists and genres and becoming a self-described “music enthusiast”, I often revisit Sondre Lerche’s music with what feels like brand new ears, and my opinions on his albums change all the time. I’ve tried to rank his albums time and time again, but this is how I would rank them now in 2024. 

I won’t include any of his “side project” type albums or EPs because I don’t hold them to the same standard as his main albums, and none of them would rank higher than any of the main albums—except for the phenomenal Dan in Real Life soundtrack, which comes pretty close to beating some of these albums. 

10. Heartbeat Radio (2009)

While Sondre Lerche makes himself known for being a genre-switching, eclectic artist, Heartbeat Radio is the most one-note of all of his albums—but that doesn’t make it bad by any means. Its lush arrangements and bittersweet, uplifting vocals exemplify his great pop sensibilities. 

9. Duper Sessions (2006)

Sondre Lerche’s jazz pop album, heavily featuring jazz pianist Eric Halvorsen and some covers of older songs, is certainly not for everyone, but remains a pleasant piece of slightly cheesy pop. 

8. Sondre Lerche (2011)

Sondre Lerche’s self-titled album is perhaps his most serious and darkest in tone, with the acoustic guitar at the forefront giving the album a more stripped back, folky, rustic sound, and hints of madness and delirium in the production. Despite having some somewhat unremarkable songs, the album features some very creative songwriting that previewed the experimentation to come. 

7. Patience (2020)

While Patience was considered by fans to be the third part of the Please and Pleasure trilogy, in context, it serves more as a prelude to what was to come on Avatars of Love. While Patience pales in comparison to its successor, Sondre Lerche’s shift to a more mature and less poppy sound is very welcome, and the album features some of his most beautiful songwriting. 

6. Faces Down (2001)

Faces Down saw the teenaged Sondre Lerche singing of adolescent frustration and heartbreak over surprisingly sophisticated bossa nova-tinged indie pop chord progressions and production. This debut album is both brilliant and brilliantly jarring at times. 

5. Please (2014)

Please represents the beginning of a new Sondre Lerche era as he began to experiment with a more avant-garde, eclectic sound and a conceptual, narrative album structure. While its devastating lyrical themes and heartbreaking vocal performances can be either brilliant or overwhelming at times, Please contains many classics of Sondre Lerche’s career and is an album to never forget. 

4. Pleasure (2017)

Pleasure sees Sondre Lerche experimenting with electronics and dance music in a more overt way. While not every experiment feels fully formed, this album’s intricate, eclectic production and infectious songwriting is incredibly unique and captures a truly singular moment in his career.  

3. Phantom Punch (2007)

While one of the less ambitious albums of Sondre Lerche’s career, Phantom Punch’s harsher rock sound still retains his indie pop and jazz influences under the surface, helping to craft its pure pop perfection. Its emo-pop-esque aesthetic is a nostalgic experience that still holds up. 

2. Two Way Monologue (2004)

Two Way Monologue’s lush arrangements, heavily emotional and vivid lyrics, and incredibly catchy choruses easily hint that Sondre Lerche intended to make a more ambitious and polished album than Faces Down--and it also comes across as someone trying to make a masterwork of their entire career. Two Way Monologue’s track list feels carefully crafted, full of strikingly personal moments and production quirks unique to this album. 

1. Avatars of Love (2022)

After years of experimenting with different genres, Sondre Lerche perfects his stylistic fusions on a more laid back album with sharp lyricism and brilliantly adventurous song structures. Reminiscent of the concept album Please, Avatars of Love is a conceptual journey from start to finish. The album matches its uplifting, inspiring lyrical meditations on love with lush production and immaculately subtle vocal performances. 

Sondre Lerche - Patience - Review

The third part of Sondre Lerche’s “P Trilogy” of albums is one of his most sophisticated yet experimental works, and it ends up being one of his best. After going through another breakup with his girlfriend of 7 years, Lerche writes about similar themes to his divorce-concept-album Please - without the same rawness, yet with more maturity to show how he has continued to evolve as a songwriter. I can think of few artists who continue to sound this fresh and unpredictable by their 9th studio album.

On title track “Patience”, Lerche transitions into an unprecedented section, a spoken word piece, over an ethereal and catchy instrumental where Chris Holm’s bass line truly stands out. “A woman on the verge of tears after midnight in a parking lot in Denver told me in confidence: / You should be on The Voice! Adam would love you. / And I thought: shrug emoji, shrug emoji…wind blows through a field of green…purple heart / We can only take so much / But some have to take so much more”. This particular part may seem cringeworthy on the surface, but on a deeper level, Lerche contrasts his persona that his American audience perceives him with to his private life. The reference to The Voice will likely make old fans chuckle, as Lerche was a judge on Norway’s version of The Voice; he can only shrug off fans’ inability to know every side of him. The surprising thing is that Lerche is as expressive as a celebrity can be on social media, constantly tweeting, posting pictures, and Instagram-vlogging about his life experiences, yet he was always extremely private about his relationship with his girlfriend, as they very rarely talked about each other online. The truth about Lerche’s romance only shows itself through his nakedly personal lyrics.

This theme of donning a disguise that covers up a secret problem in one’s love life presents itself throughout Patience and paints a picture of a couple being as close to each other as they can be, living in the same space, trying to find fulfillment in love, yet the both of them knowing they are truly living alone without saying a word about it to each other. On “At Times We Live Alone” from Please, Lerche sang “At times we live alone with our love / You’re not the first to find you need a lifetime of your own”, stressing the need for individual time within a marriage. “Can you imagine anybody else so close to you, it hurts?” (“Legends”). Yet on Patience, Lerche finds that physical closeness can also be ultimately unrewarding and still lead to inevitable feelings of spiritual loneliness.

“Love is upon us

Two bodies fit

Our minds align but in the end we must admit

There is no certain thing except that we will die alone”

Another unprecedented feature on the album is the 30-second interlude “There Is No Certain Thing”, which could have been a full song, but instead sounds like it was recorded as soon as he came up with it, which was in the best way possible - a highly emotionally vulnerable state, surrounded by ominous ambient sounds. His voice, while normally powerful, is gentle and nearly broken. This transitions into the smoother, lyrically depressing “Are We Alone Now”.

“That’s All There Is” weaves in another common theme to the relationship, which is grief. The song is dedicated to Johannes Greve Muskat, a director of a few of Lerche’s music videos, who unexpectedly passed away in May of 2019. The rest of the album shows that a tragedy has struck the couple that damages the love in their relationship. The song in question is remarkably similar to “That’s Us/Wild Combination” by Arthur Russell, yet different enough that I can appreciate Sondre doing an homage to one of my favorite songs without copying it completely.

“Put The Camera Down”, which continues themes of relationship troubles and disguises, has been utterly transformed from its acoustic demo, which was originally a bonus track on Please in 2014. The reworking of the song into gorgeous, psychedelic strings represents how the song was originally written about Lerche’s dysfunctional marriage, but now has a different context of Lerche’s second broken relationship. This is followed by “Why Would I Let You Go”, which is the centerpiece/masterpiece of the album, or perhaps this album’s “Sentimentalist” (from Please, which I consider his best song). “And in my dreams I have the strength / To not keep love at an arm’s length”

“I Can’t See Myself Without You” reminds me of “Bad Law” and “Screen Door”, both about Lerche’s previous breakup, with themes of the inability to separate one’s wrongdoings from romantic love. “Darling of mine / I slipped into the faceless pack / like I just shot someone in the back / Darling, oh darling / If temptation creates the thief / The pleasure cannot match the grief”. The song is a stylistic standout, resembling Lerche’s old music, as well as country pop, bridging the experimental tendencies of the album with his ability to write catchy tunes.

While Lerche’s albums from the 2000s were a celebration of the joys of love, “Don’t Waste Your Time” feels like a sarcastic mockery of his own optimism. “Don’t waste your time on love / You should embrace lack thereof”. On “Why Did I Write The Book of Love”, Lerche experiments again by letting his Brazilian influences shine fully. His music was always influenced by Brazilian bossa nova guitar styles, but he usually combined it with western musical elements; this song instead goes full-on bossa nova with a dancey rhythm and lush flute arrangements. Lyrically, Lerche recognizes his own failure to follow his ideal model for a relationship that must have come out of his disappointments from his marriage. “Why did I write the book of love before I knew your name? / Why did I memorize the rules but never play the game?”

“My Love Is Hard To Explain” is the conclusion that he eventually reaches as the relationship ends. One’s love may be convenient, and you may feel close to a person - making it a theoretical perfect relationship - yet there could always be some unexplainable missing variable. “I don’t know what I’ll do without you / You’re easy to love / But my love is hard to explain / Like unresolved stars / Love burns us from afar”. Overall, while not every song may not be as melodically or sonically complex as Lerche’s best work (Pleasure, Please, Phantom Punch), his experiments on the best tracks on Patience and its infinitely wise lyrical themes still show growth as a songwriter and as a person.

Rating: 4.5/5

Sondre Lerche Concert Story

I should post on here more! So here is a story that I already posted on my Tumblr, but it would also fit here, because it's about music. I'm also working on a post (or posts) about new albums I listened to in 2017 and 2018 which has literally been in the works and postponed since January 2017. Maybe I'll work on that soon since I finally have my precious free time.

If anyone's interested, these are the blog posts I made about the other 2 times I saw Sondre in concert... but I'll only let you see it IF you know my tumblr URL, since I've shared the link to this blog with people I know IRL (just put it in before the slash):
/post/131414263203
/post/159897883813

I’ll try to keep this somewhat brief, or at least shorter than my other concert blog posts, since I know it’ll be long no matter what, lol.

Last time I saw Sondre in concert I got him a cactus blossom scented candle, which was a reference to his obsessions with cacti (also my Twitter handle) and scented candles. I wasn’t sure how I would top that this time around. I know his thing right now is burgers, but I didn’t know how to make that into a gift. As a last ditch effort I made a purple and blue bracelet that was shaped like a DNA for him but I wasn’t sure if I’d actually give it to him since he probably gets a lot of bracelets from teenage fans…

I wore the Sondre t-shirt that I bought at the last concert, but I don’t think anyone noticed, because it’s literally white text on a white shirt. I also brought my entire Solo Pleasure vinyl for him to sign. I was just planning to carry it around the whole time (aka, make my dad carry it for me) - kinda difficult because it was raining outside…

The concert was pretty early in the day, it started at 7:00, so my dad and I got to the venue at 6:16 and RIGHT AWAY we saw Sondre walking through the bar outside the concert room. (He was wearing a red t-shirt and black jacket, which was notable because he was wearing something different later.) We waved to him and he recognized us right away from the last concert. He shook both our hands and I was not sure what to say but my dad told him he should come to Chicago more often. I was holding my Solo Pleasure vinyl that I’d wanted him to sign after the show, and he offered to sign it right there. I just said “So cool to see you!” as he walked into another room cause I couldn’t think of anything else.

Then we waited in a “line” of like 5 people outside the concert room for the doors to open at 6:30. For real, nobody else cared enough to get there early. We walked in and were surprised to see chairs. We’d seen another show (Aurora Aksnes) at that place (Schubas) and there weren’t chairs that time. We sat in the very front row because we could. We tucked the vinyl between our chairs so we wouldn’t have to deal with it for the time being - thankfully, we didn’t forget to bring it home after the show.

A nice woman talked to me as we waited for the show and I told her, like, my whole life story. She was like, “You seem kinda young!” and I was like “Yeah, Sondre has been making music since before I was born.”

And then the show started when Sondre ran out from not the backstage but the back of the concert room and jumped onto the stage - very professional! The first song was “Track You Down” which was pretty much the only kinda ‘rare’ song in the set.  

I didn’t take a video of every song like I did last time because I didn’t want to look like an obnoxious freak, but I did film a few good moments. Let me know if you want to see the videos, I don’t feel like uploading them.

The whole show was just like a conversation with the audience because there were literally like less than 40 people in there, and people just casually said things to him between songs and he would reply. 

I then realized that I spend way too much time thinking about Sondre because he was telling all the stories behind his songs and I’m just thinking… I already know these stories. All of them. For example, he said “I’m gonna play a song that is explicitly about masturbation” and I already knew it was going to be “Single Hand Affairs”. Well, I did learn one interesting thing. He said he wrote “No One’s Gonna Come” about the girl he sang with on “Modern Nature” (Lillian Samdal). 

Since he started with playing songs from his first 2 albums, he said he might try out doing a show in a chronological order, but that didn’t work out because he started playing Pleasure songs in the middle of the show. He also said he was trying to start performing all his songs without a guitar pick, but in the middle of “Two Way Monologue” he paused his playing to reach in his pocket and take out a pick and said he would only use a pick for that song. But he actually did play with a pick on other songs, too. Other songs had interruptions because he just forgot the lyrics and had to pause to remember. The best one was in “Violent Game” when he started singing “A subway cries out somewhere there’s / A subway…” and just stopped playing altogether to say to himself something like “A subway? Really?”

I wanted to sing along to all the songs since I know all the lyrics, but nobody else was doing it, so I stopped. Every time I started singing along, the woman who talked to me before the show looked at me weird. Also when he performed “Modern Nature”, people didn’t start singing along until after the first few verses which was weird. 

And then he mentioned something about requesting songs, and people in the audience started shouting song names, so I took the opportunity to yell “Weakest Spot!”, a song that I requested on Twitter and he liked my tweet. (It’s an extremely obscure song from an EP he released ONLY on CD on his 2008 tour.) Since he mentioned requesting songs, I was scared that he was actually gonna play “Weakest Spot”, and I was just thinking, if he plays it, I am gonna film the WHOLE thing. But he didn’t, lol.

For the encore, he took the mic and said “Now I’m gonna do 10 minutes of stand-up”, but that wasn’t true as he started singing “Human Hands” a capella. He went into the audience and sang right in people’s faces… including me, near the end of the song. I just sang along with him. There was one guy that had a totally dramatic reaction when Sondre sang to him but I just tried to keep my cool. And then the nice woman next to me started punching my shoulder and squeezing my knee and I was embarrassed.

Then we started to get in line to greet him. There was this one old guy who asked us if we brought a candle to the last show, because he said he recognized us because he was behind us in line that time. That was cool, but this guy also seemed very judgmental that I was even there, because he asked how I even got in since it was a 21+ show. My dad just explained that it’s okay as long as I have my parent with me, and then he told the story of how I was only 12 when I saw Sondre in concert for the first time back in 2014 and I think both that guy and I cringed. Also, age restrictions at concerts are DUMB.

I asked my dad if I should give Sondre the bracelet I made, and he said no, and I was like yeah, this is dumb. We didn’t buy any merch because my dad said he didn’t want to spend any money, and anyway there were no scented candles or custom t-shirts left, which is all I would’ve bought.

So when I got to Sondre, I started with “Great job at the show!” which was a little awkward. I then read him a message that one of my twitter friends from the UK wanted me to tell him. Then we took a picture. When my dad took it, he handed me the autographed vinyl and told me to pose with it, which I didn’t really want to do but I was like Okay!! Once again Sondre put his firm grip around my shoulder and posed for the picture. TBH, I’m cuter than Sondre in the pic, he is not looking his best here. And then I took a selfie with Sondre and my dad. Another guy offered to take another picture from farther away, but I nervously said no to his offer, and then we left.

I wouldn’t rate our interaction this time around as highly as I would rate the one in the 2017 concert, lol. I was just overall more awkward and didn’t have a lot of interesting things to say. At least our picture is less blurry though, lol. Sondre also liked my social media posts and replied to them with flower emojis, which made me wonder if he did that because I was wearing a flower headband at the concert, but I kinda doubt it.

And then we got on the bus back home and I got motion sickness because I kept looking at my phone, which is basically a bad dizzy feeling that you can’t fix…

But yeah that’s what happened!! Sorry, this was really long, didn’t meet my goal of brevity.