Sondre Lerche - Faces Down

The press release refers to Lerche's "almost Bowie-esque vocal style", although in reality it's far closer to Neil Hannon. Indeed, if you stripped The Divine Comedy of everything that made them interesting, you might end up with something like Faces Down, an unremarkable collection of acoustic/indie musings on matters of cliché. "Modern Nature", a duet with one Lillian Samdat, is unlistenable in its unintended atonality. Like Beck and The High Llamas, Lerche believes that 'weird effects' will hide the fundamental averageness of his songs; and, like them, the essential problem is that his tunes actually have no tunes.

Rating: 2 / 10