Tag Archives: PLZ / Virgin

On Record: Sondre Lerche – Acrobats (PLZ / Virgin)

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Reviewed by Ben Hogwood

What’s the story?

This new album from Norwegian singer-songwriter Sondre Lerche is his first in four years. The record explores a dissonance he has identified between the “increasingly dystopian world we live in and finding beauty and peace in your private life”, where “falling in love feels more and more like an act of defiance”.

Acrobats was recorded across no fewer than nine studios, Lerche’s eleventh album completed with long time partners and producers Matias Téllez and Kato Ådland, and Vetle Junker, Alexander von Mehren and Jørgen Trœen. There are orchestral arrangements by Sean O’Hagan of The High Llamas, with a substantial body of musicians from the Stockholm Studio Orchestra, Norwegian Radio Orchestra and sundry jazz and classical artists.

What’s the music like?

At times, epic – especially in the album’s core, where the songs Love Is All and Follow The River carry all before them. Lerche wears his heart on his sleeve in songs of unabashed romanticism, which works especially well when combined with his penchant for lyrical directness.

The music is pleasingly off-centre, with the urgent How Much Of This Was Planned also showing a carefree side. The strings of Little Kids curl around Lerche’s observations that “there’s cracks in everything”, while his playful side comes out best in Drive Me Away From You.

Love Is All is one for the romantics, beautifully observed and delivered, with an exquisite dialogue between Lerche and the clarinet of Solveig Wang. Meanwhile the chorus of Follow The River – inspired by an encounter with Mahler’s Resurrection symphony – is warm hearted and given with a ‘glass half full’ energy.

Does it all work?

It does, even if the songs sometimes have a lopsided structure. Lerche sings from the heart, and the arrangements are beauties.

Is it recommended?

It is. Lerche does not enjoy the same profile in the UK he perhaps did around 15 years ago, but this album shows his songwriting – and vocal delivery – are better and more meaningful than ever. In many ways he is the Nordic answer to Rufus Wainwright.

For fans of…Rufus Wainwright, Ed Harcourt, The Divine Comedy, Kings Of Convenience, Midlake

Listen / Buy

Published post no.3,022 – Sunday 20 September 2026

New music – Sondre Lerche: Follow The River (PLZ / Virgin)

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published by Ben Hogwood, with text from the press release

Acclaimed Norwegian singer/songwriter Sondre Lerche releases euphoric new single Follow The River – a flamboyant 9-minute pop-odyssey that captures the Norwegian songwriter in an unabashedly romantic, ecstatic state of mind, energised by renewed faith in love and life. Follow The River marks the second reveal from Lerche’s newly announced eleventh studio album Acrobats, out on Friday 21 August via PLZ / Virgin.

Acrobats – his first full-length of brand new music in over four years, marks the return of the beloved Norwegian artist with an album that’s bold and bombastic; a polarising reflection on the dichotomy of finding love while in times of soulless global unrest and unfathomable human atrocities.

Originally beginning life as “quite a small and simple song”, new single Follow The River gradually expanded into what Lerche describes as his “very first disco odyssey” – a sprawling nine-minute epic in its full album form, packed with ever-new scenes, encounters and experiences.

Each of its six verses zooms in on the profound and mundane details of two lost dreamers meeting and falling in love through music, scent and taste, on breezy bar visits and through sticky, sweaty city streets in summer.

“This one doesn’t make excuses for being completely overcome with feelings of love and desire,” says Lerche. “So naturally I thought, ‘I need a gospel choir on this,’ because it’s almost indulging, maybe, as an act of defiance, in the beauty of two humans finding each other, reveling in all the little, mundane moments of that.”

Featuring a rousing gospel-style choir and adlibs from singer Suzanne Sumbudu, Follow The River stands in striking contrast to much of the wider Acrobats album – unashamedly upbeat, optimistic and love drunk in all its glory.

Musically, the recording shamelessly embraces music history with nods to everyone from Pet Shop Boys, Janet Jackson and Steve Reich to Gustav Mahler’s Symphony No. 2, which inspired the track after Lerche found himself “crying his eyes out” during a performance at the Oslo Opera. “It actually started out as quite a small and simple song, but the story expanded into more of an epic, and I felt the urge to turn the entire recording into a groovy adventure, with ever-new scenes, encounters, and experiences,” says Lerche. The track also features what is perhaps Lerche’s most natural and simplistic chorus so far in his ever-expanding catalogue.

Alongside the sprawling album version – which even includes its own remix in the spirit of Pet Shop Boys’ Introspective – the song will also be released as an elegant and concise single edit clocking in at four effective minutes before summer takes over.

The expansive album version features contributions from saxophonist Jonas Hamre, clarinetist Solveig Wang and vocalist Gabriela Garrubo, alongside Lerche’s longtime collaborators, drummer Dave Heilman and producer Kato Ådland.

‘Acrobats’ physical pre-order is available as a webstore exclusive 2xLP gatefold ‘Splendor’ edition including recent EP ‘Turning Up The Heat Again’, a standard 1xLP edition on transparent red vinyl, and CD.

Sondre Lerche‘s new album ‘Acrobats’ is out 21st August via PLZ / Virgin. Sondre Lerche will embark on an extensive headline tour in support of the new album, which will take him across the UK, Europe and the US. For more information or to purchase tickets, visit his website HERE.

Published post no.2,921 – Thursday 18 June 2026