Listen: Sondre Lerche - "Dead of The Night"

photo by Tonje Thilesen

 

Around the time of his 2014 album Please, Norwegian singer/songwriter Sondre Lerche essentially abandoned his established songwriting formula - writing about 20 songs between records before narrowing them down in pursuit of somewhat continuous form of songwriting that where each album kind of feed into each other. The result was Please, Pleasure, and Patience, a series of records that form a sort of loose trilogy but feature songs that were all developed sometime in the seven years between Lerche's self-titled sixth album and the end of the last year's Patience. While covid lockdowns forced many bands/artists to essentially buckle down and explore new methods of music making and music sharing, Lerche was fortunate enough to be able to return to his native Norway where he was able to both tour rather extensively as well as work on new music with his regular collaborators. "Dead of the Night", the first single from what fans can all assume is a forthcoming album, is a taste of Lerche's Norwegian return. Clocking in at 10 mins long, it eclipses the album ender "Things You Call Fate" from his debut Faces Down as his longest track, while also continuing an ongoing trend of Lerche taking his pop sensibilities and using them to explore long form songwriting. 

 

"Dead of Night" slowly unfurls, Lerche taking listeners on a detailed tour of feelings felt and experiences experienced in the late night hours. Much like "Why Would I Let You Go", Lerche's aim is largely narrative, not necessarily in hooks or choruses and "Dead of the Night" is a smörgåsbord of verses - though not without its share of quasi-hooks. It's a song that nods to the themes of Please, Pleasure, and Patience without really indulging in them itself; for every mention of the body, of pleasures sought, rejected, or indulged, there's a forward momentum that carries you through - they're merely landmarks on scenic ride Lerche's embarking on. Lerche essentially takes his greatest strengths - his ability to craft incredibly relatable songs and his succinctness while doing so and flips them on their head - it's Lerche at his most narratively exploratory and his least committed to traditional song structures - instead offering up a lyrical fantasia that still taps into the visceral. "We're living in the dead of night in the hope that we might inspire another ending", Lerche croons, and even among its expansive sprawl, among its numerous twists and bends, still manages a concise encapsulation of the song's true takeaway.

Sondre Lerche's latest single "Dead of The Night" is out now.

Listen: Son Step - "Hissing Sauna"

 

 

Considering the range of sounds on Philly experimental pop trio Son Step's last album Fossilillies, I should hardly be surprised at the difference between "New Ears" and new track "Hissing Sauna" and yet, considering how mellow their previous single was, I certainly didn't expect such a dance-floor ready track to come from the same EP. As emotive a set piece as "New Ears" was, Son Step operates best when everyone is given their time to shine and everyone certain does here - especially guest drummer Ben Sloan. Where keyboardist Jon Coyle took the lead on "New Ears", this time Joel Sephy Gleiser takes the reins - though their trademark harmonies and layered vocals are still very much present. Inspired by Unknown Mortal Orchestra's "I Can't Keep Checking My Phone" as well as the multitude of dystopian tales of Black Mirror, Gleiser weighs the consequences of the constant state of connectedness our phones give us. It's a crisis numerous artists have tackled as the digital landscape continually introduces new way to keep people engaged and Gleiser wonders if it's all worth it. "All that I can be is in this thing concealed, all that I can be can never be revealed, when the feeling of an image disappears what does it mean to feel", Gleiser croons at arguably the most toe-tappingly energetic moment of the song - as Gleiser essentially asks if our reliance on technology is desensitizing at the same moment the song compels you to dance. There's simultaneously a "pay no attention the man behind the curtain" feeling to the track's embrace of outright pop at it's most climactic moments and a "spoonful of sugar makes the medicine go down" approach. 

Son Step's New Ears EP is out October 8th. You can pre-order it now.

Listen: Kristine Leschper - "Something Like An Exit"/"Figure & I"

 

Originally starting as a solo artist in Athens, Georgia before adopting the moniker Mothers, it seems as though singer/songwriter Kristine Leschpher is returning to creating music under her own name. While last year Leschper realized track "Something Like An Exit" as part of a pretty expansive 30 song covid-19 fundraiser for Kasra Kurt and Ada Babar's Nino Tomorrow label, Leschper has also announced new single "Figure & I". 

From the earliest days of Mothers, Leschpher has returned to the body as a songwriting subject and both "Something Like An Exit" and "Figure & I" share that focus in different ways. In "Something Like An Exit", accompanied by a soft bed of synths, Leschper sings about catching her own reflection. Mirrors and other reflective surfaces - in this case a window, are treated as portals outside of the self even as you use them to view the self. The song buoys between whether that's necessarily a good or bad thing - "whats the point? Building yourself a beautiful box with no entrance". Whether you're preening yourself in a mirror or fully accepting how you look in it, there no escaping your own body. Where that was used for drama in Mothers' "Beauty Routine", here it's delivered as a soothing admission.

 "Figure & I" is perhaps the most succinct Leschper's been with her words. "Figure and I, it's not always hard to find time to be alive" are the track's lyrics and she delivers them in different inflections, with clapping and vibraphone providing percussion. It's brief, it's vague, but transfixing - there's no answers to the question the lyrics raise - even as Lescpher, with the aid of Sammy Weissberg and Garrett Blake craft a multi-layered dream-pop tapestry.

"Something Like An Exit" and "Figure & I" are out now.