Sondre Lerche - Acrobats
2026 • SELF-RELEASED • INDIE FOLK / ART POP
78/100
It’s weird times out there. Every day I am unsurprised by the world’s expected disasters, both here in the US and abroad. Norwegian songwriter Sondre Lerche feels this just like the rest of us. He has been doing this for 25 years after all, and on his 11th studio album Acrobats, Lerche wrings the chaos of our era into a succinct, focused set of eight songs.
Lerche’s brand of pop goes way back and stretches in every direction: from a pure love of the Beach Boys and The Beatles, to scoring the 2007 Ryan Gosling film Lars and the Real Girl, to the theatrical grandness of starring as Christian in a Norwegian stage production of Moulin Rouge! That big, showy stage instinct sits in a constant push-pull with the heavier subject matter. Written between 2022 and 2025 across nine different studios, these songs reflect the dystopian global unrest, soulless world leaders, and digital vomit we are all forced to consume. Through all that noise, he still fights to find love as an act of genuine defiance.
The record opens with "How Much of This Was Planned?", an anthemic thesis that feels like shaking your head in disbelief, not out of disappointment, but sheer fascination. Born out of watching master jazz musicians improvise on a Joni Mitchell tribute tour, it captures that out-of-body high of witnessing pure creative magic: "Players waiting their turn in the shadows / Trying to translate all the murmur and babble / From her giggle when she conquers the mayhem / To the stories barely there until they play them."
From there, tracks like "Little Kids" and "Drive Me Away From You" sonically pull me back to the golden era of indie folk and chamber pop, carrying vibrant shades of The Decemberists and Death Cab for Cutie. On "Little Kids," Sean O’Hagan of High Llamas brings in lush strings over a subtle Tony Allen-inspired beat (no, not that Tony Allen), turning a song about forgiving your younger, naive self into a warm reflection. Meanwhile, "Drive Me Away From You" goes full theatrical bravado, letting horns and grand piano chords explode under Lerche’s soaring vocal delivery.
The album’s consistency, however, is hard to pin down. It ebbs and flows, surging up and dropping out, which may end up only matching the daily whiplash of modern human emotions. One minute you are swept up in the nine-minute gospel-disco odyssey of "Follow the River," and the next, "Love Is All" pulls you into a quiet, world-weary bar scene. That erratic momentum can occasionally feel jarring, but it mimics the exact chaos it is responding to. And I do feel that romance at times, especially in that first have of the album.
By the time the ambient closer "Life-Changing Love" confronts the absurdity of war while spring birds chirp outside the window, the message clicks. Acrobats is a love record shadowed in theatrical ominousness. In a time that practically demands cynicism, treating human connection as a high-wire act worth attempting is the only real choice. It is messy, ambitious, and in the end, only human.
NBA COMP: CJ MCCOLLUM
Acrobats gives me a solid CJ McCollum energy: An undeniable craftsman with an endlessly pretty mid-range bag, delivering a reliable 18 points on nights where he looks very good without completely stealing the show.
