Phantom Punch

About

This tasteful and handsome sensitive indie-rock crooner has been huge in his Norwegian homeland since at least 2002, but even if he got arrested in the United States, it's doubtful many folks would notice. <i>Phantom Punch</i>, his most terse and powerful album to date, is an unexpectedly fun update of literate, catchy upbeat pop-rock. The scuttlebutt is that Lerche was influenced greatly by the energetic punk-pop of his elder peer Elvis Costello after opening for him on a tour in 2006, and the result is a 180 degree turn from the jazzy stylings of 2006's <i>Duper Sessions</i>. The production is raw and excellent, less subtle and encumbered than his first albums, but his backing band Faces Down really pull through here. A couple songs overuse dynamic compression; that everything-loud-at-once wall-of-sound might work well for the Killers, but not everyone needs it. Still, unlike, say, Snow Patrol, Lerche has shown himself perfectly capable of making a mainstream modern rock album that's compelling, eclectic and entirely entertaining, all without selling even a shred of his soul. The only thing Lerche needs now is an audience; someone get this guy a stadium to fill, and quickly!

via Apple Music