The Velvet Viking
Norwegian phenom Sondre Lerche brings his precocious sunny-day pop straight outta the fjords
Lerche has never written a song in his native language and doesn't like to sing in it. He finds Norwegian a little lacking in natural hooks. (And as anyone who has heard traditional Norse folk songs can tell you, it's definitely an acquired taste.) "I don't enjoy writing in Norwegian at all," he says. "It's strange to say, but it doesn't come naturally. Then when I started writing in English, it just came naturally. I was always interested in the language, and most of the music I was interested in had English lyrics. I don't enjoy singing in Norwegian, either. I think it sounds very clumsy, and um, itchy. It's not very nice to listen to."
He heard a lot of it during his recent spate of appearances at South By Southwest -- up to now, his only Texas gigs. His showcase had a Danish and Norwegian scheme. "There was a lot of Norwegian press there," Lerche says. "The Norwegian media is really supportive of any artists that do stuff outside of Norway, so at times at the show it felt like there was more Norwegians there than Americans."
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And so far, that imbalance is pretty descriptive of his fan base. But one more album as good as the last one and it won't be long before that's no longer the case.
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