After publishing one of the best songs of 2022, the enormous ‘Avatars of Love’, a letter of introduction to his equally notable album of the same title, the Norwegian Sondre Lerche is back with his 11th album, which comes with scissors: if ‘Avatars of Love’ was a double album that extended to 18 tracks, ‘Acrobats’ will only contain eight cuts, although, lasting between 4 and 9 minutes, it has all the earmarks that it will not be short.
‘Acrobats’, which comes after Lerche’s participation in the ‘Moulin Rouge’ musical in Norway, has been recorded in up to nine different studios and is presented as a “suite” of eight songs. Some special editions contain the three songs grouped in an EP published last January: ‘After the Coup’, ‘Turning Up the Heat Again’ and ‘Diplomacy’, although none of them are part of the main tracklist.
‘Little Kids’, the lead single ‘Acrobats’, supported by a beautiful orchestrated string section, is another beautiful song by Sondre Lerche. Inspired by the naivety of first loves, ‘Little Kids’ describes an intense but ephemeral love like youth: “Love was a temporary offering / just one more false alarm,” Sondre sings in his most sincere and tender register.
‘Acrobats’, despite its romantic concept, will not avoid the world’s problems. “There is a dissonance between the increasingly dystopian world in which we live and the fact of finding beauty and peace in your private life,” Lerche describes in the official note. “It feels almost like a paradox that I’m lucky enough to have come to a life and a love that are so meaningful and true. And at the same time, it seems impossible to write a love song without taking into account the terrible things that are happening in the world.”
“If there is a theme on this album,” the artist adds, “I guess it is finding love in times of great turmoil and hopelessness, and that is a beautiful thing.” On August 21, available on platforms and stores.
