Q&A: Sondre Lerche

(Credit: Mona Records)

For Sondre Lerche, New York City is pretty much home at this point. The Norwegian-born singer-songwriter has lived there since 2005—but until his self-titled seventh album (out June 7 on Mona Records), he had never recorded an album there, instead usually returning to his hometown of Bergen and recording with the musicians he came of age with. But he was ready for a change.

“I wanted to make a record in the neighborhood where I live,” Lerche explains, referring to the Brooklyn neighborhood of Williamsburg, which he now calls home. “Because I’ve made so many friends, but we haven’t really worked together. So I was really curious to see how that might work.”

So in a way, “Sondre Lerche” is the versatile 28-year-old’s first American album. Recorded live in the studio with minimal overdubs by renowned producer Nicolas Verhnes (Spoon, Animal Collective), the new 10-track collection showcases Lerche’s increasingly assured and distinctive songwriting style, which on past records has touched on everything from folk-rock to power-pop and even jazz—all of which you'll hear traces of on the new songs.

In a hotel lobby in Austin, Texas, during the South by Southwest Music Conference, Lerche sat down with Metromix to discuss the new album, his first U.S. tour with a full band in four years, and his love of James Bond films and Brazilian music.

I’ve only heard one song off the new record so far, “Domino”—but it kind of sounds like you’re taking a lot of separate musical styles you’ve explored on previous albums and rolling them up into one sound.
It’s been really interesting. The album of course doesn’t come out for awhile, but we wanted to let people hear something and I really wanted to share that song. It just had the vibe of the record, I felt. People have been really responsive, but it’s funny—it seems that whatever people’s favorite record of mine is, [“Domino”] reminds them of that record.

That’s a good sign.
Yeah, ‘cause it has so much in it. And I agree with what you say in a way. After having done six records or whatever it is, I feel that as a songwriter, what I’ve learned is that in the studio, I can really stretch and go in lots of different directions without losing the essence of what I do. When I write a song, it’ll come out sounding like one of my songs. You could do almost anything with it in the studio. And that gives me confidence to really explore.

When I saw you on tour for “Heartbeat Radio,” you played solo. Will you do that again for this tour, or will you have a band?
This one is gonna be with a band. A brand-new band of some of the people who played on the record. These are New York players mostly: I have this drummer Dave Heilman, who plays with Regina Spektor. He plays on “Domino,” actually, and a bunch of other stuff on the record. And this guy K. Ishibashi—he’s been playing with Of Montreal a lot lately. He did a lot of the string arrangements on the record. And another Dave [Hartley], from the band War on Drugs—they’re a really good Philadelphia band. So it’s gonna be another entirely new band that I’ve put together.

I knew you had a place in New York, but I didn’t realize you live there more or less full time now.
The first year or two I was a little bit more on and off, but I spend most of my time there now. So much that I had to start paying taxes here. That’s when I realized, “Oh, I’m sort of living here, I guess.” And now—I’m not a citizen, but I am…what’s the other thing? A resident. I have a green card.

A “resident alien”…isn’t that the term? Which always sounds weird.
It really sounds like I came from another galaxy.

Have you ever recorded any songs in Norwegian?
I’ve always written in English. Always.

Is that because of the artists who influenced you?
Yeah. There was never any Norwegian language music that was anywhere near as significant for me as the American and English music. And Brazilian—the Portuguese language is something I’m accustomed to hearing, but I don’t speak or write.

So wait—there might be a bossa nova album in your future?
I’d like to make more of like a really acoustic, psychedelic, Brazilian-inspired record sometime. I have some friends in Brazil who are really gifted musicians and songwriters. So I’d love to go there sometime—I’ve never been—and maybe record with local musicians. I really like a lot of the late ‘60s, early ‘70s Brazilian music, when it was a mixture of the old bossa nova and rock influences. Like Caetano Veloso, Gilberto Gil. When it started getting a little psychedelic, but the songwriting was still really rich and harmonic. They were sort of moving away from traditional bossa nova—they discovered fuzz pedals.

You have a song on the new record called “Domino,” which is the name of a Bond girl, and your last album had a song named after [James Bond actor] George Lazenby. Would one of your dream gigs be writing a theme song for a James Bond movie?
I would love to do that. Absolutely. I really love a lot of the classic theme songs. So yeah, I would definitely be up for that challenge. I have a couple of tricks in my bag to pull it off.

Who’s your favorite Bond?
I have to say, Sean Connery is really stylish and cool, but I really like Roger Moore. He’s a bit of a tool, but he’s sort of funny. I like his humor. It’s really silly, it’s really stupid, and some of those films got a bit out of hand, but I have a lot of time for him.