I’ve always thought of myself as a romantic songwriter, but recently the act of falling in love has felt like an act of defiance. What a perverse paradox to have landed in a life and a love that is meaningful and true, these past few years. As Billy Corgan once sang, “the world is a vampire”. It has felt somewhat impossible to write a love song without taking into account the unspeakable things happening in our world. I am grateful and immensely privileged to have had love and the promise of Acrobats to keep me sane and occupied.

The first song I want to share with you is called Little Kids. It’s the trickiest song I’ve ever had the pleasure escorting over the finish line. After two years of constant rewrites I entered Alexander’s studio to start recording what I had. Only to leave it prematurely a few hours later, desperately unhappy with the verses I hade given myself the task of singing. For some reason I really believed in the song. I had a chorus I loved, and a chord-progression that I loved meditating on, but the song as a whole was nowhere near where it needed to be. So I returned to my room in Bergen, wanting to give the song one last shot at greatness.

That night I went through my note book and found a line I had written down, without any context: «Then again, we’re just kids, little kids, you and I». In just a split second, the momentum of the song switched and I saw a path forward. I stayed up most of the night writing the four verses that envelop the choruses, and woke up feeling ecstatic and confident, ready to record what I had. And that was it. Endless thanks to my co-producer and keys-maestro Alexander von Mehren for his diligence and patience, and to string-maestro Sean O’Hagan for the arrangement. And last but not least: to Stockholm Studio Orchestra for finding time in-between Taylor Swift sessions to record for Acrobats, with conductor Erik Arvinder! Excellence, all over. And then there’s Dave’s drumming, and Chris’ bass.

Little Kids is one of the best songs and recordings I’ve done, in my own opinion. I can only hope that it offers you something, too. You can stream it wherever you listen to music, some options are here.

You know that feeling we get when we see photos of ourselves and realize we were so much younger than we thought at the time? That’s the feeling I had when the song finally came together. It’s all very personal, but highly universal, I suspect. From the first verse’s innocent rejection, to the third verse’s plunge into premature adulthood, Little Kids is a song about forgiving who you were and who you were with, fumbling towards love, life and adulthood. The chorus makes reference to (or takes offence with) the oft-quoted beautiful line from Leonard Cohen’s Anthem. There’s cracks in everything / and still no light got in.

And there’s a line I kept returning to that paraphrases a line from the Yeats poem The Second Coming, which both Joni (Mitchell) and Joan (Didion) have found ample use of in their glorious writing. You tried to warn me / but the center couldn’t hold.

For the first time in my career I felt compelled to make a video that actually visualized elements of the lyrics. It’s not an adaptation, but something about the nature of these words made me not want to counter or contrast them this time, but rather follow them and elevate them.

The video gives me great pride, it’s directed by Lea Meyer, an incredibly talented young director from Oslo. I had just a few initial ideas that I wanted implemented: that we are introduced to three different couples, different ages and challenges. And I mentioned the film A Swedish Love Story from 1970, as a visual and thematically relevant reference. She and her incredible crew did such a beautiful job, I implore you to watch and share the Little Kids video.

I really, really wanted to stay within the bounds of one disc for the Acrobats album, though I’ve written and recorded so much in this three year period. So I simply could not resist making a very special Splendor edition of Acrobats, which spreads the album out over two LPs and throws in the three tracks from the Turning Up The Heat Again EP that came out in January. All of it in 45 RPM for extra listening pleasure, in an extra beautiful gatefold cover, with yellow and green vinyl.

Only 500 exist — no retail, only available for pre-order from my store. Along with the other versions of the album, of course. And the long awaited Acrobats bucket hat! All that, plus a tote bag and a t-shirt. Help yourself!

Come fall, I will return to life as a touring artist. It feels exotic at this point, seeing as I’ve been so preoccupied with making Acrobats + my side-gig as Christian in 130 performances of Moulin Rouge! The Musical these past few years.

I’ll bring a few players on the US trek in September, so get your tickets now, I’ve you wanna hang. I am feeling like exploring hyper-intimacy this time. All tickets for all the Acrobats tours are available here via my newly upgraded website. Have a look!

We’ve already announced six unique nights at my fave venue in Oslo, Parkeatret with the full band and guests, in October.

More Norway dates will be added for October shortly.

In November I go on a solo European journey. I’ll be going to a bunch of cities I haven’t even been, armed with my nylon string guitar, new and old songs, and whatever merch I fan fit in my bag. Tell all your friends, let’s get together and make it count. Scandinavia and a few more EU shows will also be added shortly.

I’ll fill you in on everything you need to know about Acrobats and beyond as we roll along. Lastly, I wanna give credit and shoutout to Rune Mortensen who does all the Acrobats designs and posters. The Acrobats handwriting is my own, but he puts it all together and makes it shine. The photos of me are by my love Hilde Solli, except for the live photo which was taken by Thomas Pettersen at a show in Sandvika, Norway last year. And the great Acrobats cover photo is taken by the legendary American photographer of circus people and aerial acrobats, Philip Makanna / GHOSTS.

Thank you for following and listening — spread the word, let this music and joy be heard.

Much love,
SL

My girlfriend Hilde took this photo of me on the island of Salina off the coast of Sicily back in October. At that moment I don’t think I had even decided that I would release an EP at the top of 2026. But I had the songs and the recordings ready in my pocket. And suddenly also a press shot or two waiting to be developed.

I had been frustrated that my schedule made it so that I still had to wait a good while before releasing any of the new music I had been working on for so long. And then I got the idea that three particular songs could form a sort of coalition to greet the new year together in whatever shape or form the year would find us. A palette cleanser. An EP called Turning Up The Heat Again.

I’ve never thought of myself as political songwriter, although I try to use my platform in accordance with my instincts and moral beliefs. Not that different from songwriting, and yet an entirely different dance.

But for a while I had been aching to be able to more thoroughly reflect the absurdity and sadness of the theatre of ego and politics that we’ve all been forced to watch and endure for so long. The systematic dismantling of democracy, the ignorant disregard for human empathy and decency. The exploitation of religion to enable criminals, and so forth. You know, everyday stuff.

I wanted to write not as an activist, but as a songwriter trying to capture the flow and direction of my thoughts and feelings. Same old thing as any love song. The deeply private, the everyday, exceptional and shared experiences.

I think I worried that a song like After The Coup or Diplomacy might feel like yesterday’s news by the time it might someday be released. Sadly, these and other songs that I’ll share later, feel more clear-eyed and prescient now than I dared to imagine. I wish it weren’t so.

They are not anthems or grand solutions to anything. They are small tunes of different colors, influences, moods and aesthetic persuasions. I think they are beautiful, which is why I choose to share them with you. We have clearly given far too much power and attention to people who are careless and callous with the value of our lives, our future, and the future of the planet.

Turning Up The Heat Again is just a slightly perverse song about the constant pursuit of songs. Not giving up, and throwing whatever it takes into the cauldron, in case it makes the song sing. Stubbornness, eternal belief that tomorrow could be more inspired.

There’s no big finish to this post. I’m sharing my thoughts and music. Life goes on for most, but not for all. I hope the music inspires, but it’s not enough.

“I don’t believe in anything but love / in spite of what I’ll have you believe / In love in spite of everything / I need to believe”

You can stream the EP here.

Or you can download it from Bandcamp!

I’ll write more in-depth about the songs and the recording in the next post.

Thanks for listening,

SL

My girlfriend Hilde came home from work one night saying, “ you never told me you once owned a car!”. Honestly, I had forgotten. It was such a short period of time and so very long ago.

But, yes, there was a brief moment in my life when I owned a vintage turquoise 1966 VW Beetle. It was a strange time in my life, a few months after the release of Two Way Monologue, amidst intensive touring schedules in the US and Europe, and an underlying sense of unrest and frustration. I hid it well, but perhaps the purchase of this vehicle should’ve alerted people.

At least my brief stint as a car-owner was well-documented. Sometime in the spring or summer of 2004 a photographer and a journalist from the elegant international now-defunct car and fashion magazine Carl’s Cars followed me on my first journey with the car, from Oslo to my then-homeown of Bergen.

They had asked me to put together a playlist of songs that was sure to last us all the way home. I had just barely gotten my license, and was unsure if I could even start the damn car. But it sure looked good.

This was in the early days of iPods, and I remember spending most of my time off on tours loading my CD collection into my laptop so that I then could transfer each song and album onto my iPod. And yet, life was somewhat simpler, even as I felt torn between my life’s mission in music, and the longing for other human connections. One seemed to exclude the other. Or so I thought.

Someone had given Hilde a copy of this 21 year old edition of Carl’s Car. And in it she found unlikely proof of my former life as young car owner, and my early days as playlist maker.

When I saw my song selections, my first thought was that little has changed. Thankfully, I’ve not limited myself to only these 183 songs in the 21 years that have passed since this article was published. But it still gives a fair sense of my musical essence. I still stand by the choices, although I feel I could’ve given more thought to the sequencing, transitions and balance of the playlist as a whole. There’s a lot of Chet Baker, which makes sense seeing as I was just one year away from recording what would become my next album, Duper Sessions. I had just embraced Fleetwood Mac, both Tusk and Tango-era. And there’s a whole lot of contemporary R ‘n B and pop hits that still feel fresh to this day. Surprisingly many of them involving Raphael Saadiq or The Neptunes.

And of course the pillars: Prefab Sprout, Milton Nascimento, Lo Borges, The High Llamas, a-Ha, Gilberto Gil, Todd Rundgren, Steely Dan, Van Dyke Parks, Beach Boys, as well as songs by the supreme songwriters of a certain era I hold dear; Cole Porter, Kurt Weill and Tom Jobim.

Naturally, I had to recreate this playlist. The whole thing was originally 11 hours and 6 minutes. Which is quite a bit longer than it should take you to drive from Oslo to Bergen, but you never know what might happen on the way. The featured interview is brief and banal, and does not mention the fact that my 1966 VW Beetle stopped working halfway over the mountains, in Geilo, where we had to leave it in a car shop, and continue the journey home by train.

Thankfully, we had taken all the photos we needed for the piece by then.

A few months later I had to have my brother help me sell the car. I had decided to move to New York. More than anything, this playlist reminds me of that big transition. I would not be needing a car.

Here’s the playlist on Qobuz and on Spotify. Note that some selections are missing, or represented by other, available versions, due to not being available on the various streaming platforms.

Enjoy the ride — and a Happy New Year. Eager for what’s to come.

Love is all,
SL

The very next day I give it away, sharing the recording with my fans and followers as a Christmas gift to all. It is now simply too late to turn this ship around and pick another song. Christmas won’t wait. And to be fair, the song in question appears to be the best-selling and best-streaming song of 2025, in addition to also being the year’s most-played song on US radio. And yet I haven’t met a single person so far who can remember ever hearing it. It’s a mystery! Who are these all these people? Who am I? Am I too far down my own echo chamber? Is this the definite end of monoculture, when even the most overwhelmingly popular song of the year is a stranger to the us all? My recording of «Die With A Smile» by Bruno Mars & Lady Gaga certainly won’t make much of a difference in that regard. But it’s a great, classic song. The original recording sounds beautiful, elegant, powerful, timeless. It’s almost a wonder it was so huge in 2025 (as opposed to 1975). A lot of that has to do with it being performed (and written) by two of the world’s most charismatic and dramatic singers. But I think I’ve also developed a soft spot for it because it kinda sounds like some very elegant indie record Matias might’ve have produced and recorded in his scrappy studio Bergen, circa 2015. Naturally, our version today won’t sound anything like that. My instinct was to make it groovy, primitive, minimalist and bombastic.

As I type this I am about to go record the vocals, with a slight cold — sorry in advance. And then Matias will mix and master the song in a hurry, before go out for a plate of the traditional Bergen specialty persetorsk (a local cod-dish).

But that was all yesterday, and now you can hear it, via my old pals at Stereogum. We hope you enjoy it!

It’s been yet another dystopian year, and no one song has been able to solve humanity’s considerable blind-spots, puzzles and failings this year, either. But we keep trying. I’ve been mostly occupied with the completion of my next album, the follow-up to Avatars Of Love. It’s all done and I can’t wait to release it in the year to come. But first: an EP of three songs written and recorded in the same breath as the new album will be released on January 7th. The EP is called Turning Up The Heat Again and it’s a palette cleanser before the main course. As the year wears on, all will come to the table. See you in 2026!

Keep in touch, happy holidays and thanks for listening.

Love, peace and anti-fascism for all,

SL

The below playlist tries to respect that criteria: 2025 releases only.

As some of you will know, that is also the criteria when I pick what huge hit song to cover at the end of each year. But I’ll get back to that in a not very distant future post (I feel it’s been a terrible year for global hit phenomenons, sadly). I will be in the studio with Matias all day tomorrow to decide, record and finish this year’s seasonal offering. It will be on your digital doorstep on Tuesday.

Most of the songs on this playlist of 2025 favorites are part of good, sometimes great albums, so I urge any listener to explore, and explore more! I think my the album that made the most impression on me this year was Song Of The Earth by Dirty Projectors. It’s best experienced as a whole, and it also exists in a instrumental version, which makes just as much sense as the original release. This is music of great skill and imagination. Something to aspire to and be inspired by.

Thankfully there’s more than one streaming platform, and because some of my pioneer-colleagues have already withdrawn their works from Spotify, there’s a few fantastic songs missing from the below Spotify link. Most notably the Norwegian group Valkyrien and selections from their “Venter på noen som venter på noen” album, which you will find on Qobuz, among other alternative streamers.

I recommend giving Qobuz a shot. The sound quality is exceptional, they do great editorials with passion for music, and they pay a fairer share to the artists. It is now finally very easy to transfer playlists from other platforms to your Qobuz subscription. A possibility and a good omen for 2026.

Listen to Sondre’s favorite songs of 2025 on Qobuz

Listen to Sondre’s favorite songs of 2025 on Spotify

Ok, that’s it. Let me know what I am desperately missing — or what’s we are intensely in sync on!

More to come,

SL

But for now: I just came out of the shower thinking about substack. Or rather, I was giggling, thinking about how songs sometimes are strange assignments that you give yourself to keep moving and stay sane.

Tomorrow (Saturday November 8, 2025) I am doing an in-person songwriting class here in Oslo. Next Saturday I’ll do it in Trondheim and on November 22 I’ll do one in Bergen. That’s not the point — although there are still a few free spots for the Trondheim and Bergen classes.

In preparing for this I’ve been thinking about my own patterns, tricks, fiascos and memories of songwriting attempts. The one that came to mind in the shower was regarding the song the ended up being called Hell No.

Hell No ended up being one of the original songs for the Dan In Real Life movie in 2007. But it originally started long before that project came my way. The brief, so to speak, that I gave myself, was: Doncha Go Way Mad performed by The Jazz Passengers (with Debbie Harry on vocals) featuring Elvis Costello — meets Don’t Know Why by Norah Jones.

One of these you have probably heard a million times, the other you should definitely hear. It’s a most charming and silly duet from the great American songbook, recorded in the 90s with great chemistry between Costello and Harry and the band.

So I went to work, trying to merge these two inspirations into one more silly little song. My original idea was to pitch it to a pair of other, more famous singers, who I wanted to hear duet. And my first idea was Norwegian god and goddess of song, Morten Harket and Sissel. My pitching abilities were not pro, mainly because I believed so deeply in the power of a song, that I didn’t even bother to record a propper demo. I simply had my guitar player Kato sing the female part in a deeply uncomfortable falsetto, on top of my solo acoustic demo.

I asked my manager at the time to please pass it on to the relevant people, but I am not sure he ever did because it sounded completely bonkers.

A few years later, I was looking for a duet for a moment in Dan In Real Life, and I thought of the original Hell No demo and blushed. I felt bad for having put Kato through that. And I felt awkward about Morten and Sissel potentially having heard that demo and thought WTF?!? Hopefully it never reached them.

So I went to work again, did some rewriting, rearranging, and recorded the song with my band at the time, including Kato on guitar. I did not ask him to sing this time. I asked Regina Spektor to join me as my Debbie Harry — we even did it live in Oslo one night, the very same night I met my drummer Dave for the very first time. It was love at first sight! And the song became the soundtrack to clumsy, clandestine romantic encounters between Steve Carrell and Juliette Binoche at a Bowling parlor in Rhode Island.

Ok, that’s all I had for now. Since last I have released a new collaboration with my cousin Lars Vaular who is Norway’s finest rapping poet. It’s called Ler Meg Ihjel and I’ll tell you more about it next week. Promise!

Only love!

SL

I want to do it, very much so. But each time I succeed, it gets a little harder to write another one. Or so it would appear on a day like today.

It feels like this: the more progress I make as a writer of songs, the more critical I get, and the less prone I am to letting anything slide in the process. It’s not even about any specific or technical thing, it’s about how it feels in the end. And when you expand your capabilities very slowly and gradually over time, so do your expectations. This much makes sense.

But, as we all know, an important part of any creative process is to not block or judge an impulse or an idea too early on. Which means there’s all sorts of ideas, ambitions and instincts colliding, alongside impatience and distractions, of which there are so many. The process is like this, more or less, on and off, at least half of the time you try to do it. Forever.

Granted, I was EXHAUSTED after writing (and recording) Avatars Of Love, and felt ever so happy to take a break from the flow of songwriting output for just a little while. That album was well-received enough that I could tour and bask in the joy of completed and fulfilling work. It also provided the desire to assemble and produce new projects that did not require me to write new songs for a while, such as Avatars Of The Night, the covers compilation Understudy, and the Two Way Monologue 20th anniversary reissue.

But I have to write, eventually. Everything I do stops if I do not.

Thankfully, I am well, well, well enough into the writing (and recording) process for the next album that this is no emergency alarm or desperate cry of despair. Although, I feel deeply incapable of anything, especially writing a waterproof song of beauty at this exact moment.

This rant is merely a glimpse into yet another day of trying. I have never wanted to rely on waiting for the song to present itself to me. I believe in presenting myself to it. Very often, nothing comes of it. But if I only wrote when inspired, very little would transpire. Sitting down to write, play, mess around, eventually will inspire something that leads to something of substance. Something that becomes a song. That maybe you play for someone else. That maybe you record. That maybe you release. That maybe you keep playing for the rest of your life. Or not.

On days like today the prospect of making a song happen feels so utterly impossible that I cannot fathom how I ever managed to write anything in the past. It seems a foreign and perverse idea that I even try to write a song. In general it’s wise to try to remain humble, and I want to be as humble as I need to be in order to not get in the way of my song. But I’m not a particularly modest songwriter. I am happily a medium, but I am not merely a medium. I have an ego. I care about each word, each move, each gesture, and what I do does not happen through divine intervention so much as constantly working and searching, rewriting and rethinking. And also: knowing when to stop and let it be.

Today, however, I am not so much humble, as humbled by how preposterous the idea of even writing the opening sentence of something — anything — seems. I’ve discarded every single combination of words that have come to mind so far today. I’ve been at it for 12 hours. I take breaks, of course. If not, you can really spoil the process because it’s such a taxing confrontation of your own most fragile and talentless self that you’ll end up dreading to expose yourself to that mirror.

The specific song I am trying to write today (and yesterday, and the day before that, and the day before that, and so forth) already has melody, structure, a full musical shape. And it became somewhat of a problem child the moment I brought it to life a little over a year ago. It’s a tricky melody to write to, it moves quite fast, with many potential internal rhyme-schemes and a special sensitivity to syllables, vowels, and how the words roll off the tongue. How they SING.

So, for over a year I’ve been at it. I’ve had to put it aside many times, and thankfully I’ve been able to write other things that I am happy with the meantime. But every time I return to my problem child I feel increasingly self-conscious about how every new attempt stigmatizes this tender little creature yet further into a self-fulfilling prophecy of hopelessness. I’ll think about the song constantly while I’m doing other things. I consider other ideas and approaches, I get grumpy and distracted. Last week I changed the verse melody, and it felt inspired. But the words did not come. No words that were welcome, at least.

I’ll sometimes outline a song lyric story in advance, if I have a very specific idea and arc in mind. And then I’ll chew on it for months before I even sit down to try and write it. It’s how I got started on Guarantee That I’d Be Loved and Dead Of The Night, among others. I’ve tried approaching this one that way, employing some of the tools I’ve developed over the years. Clearly, I am experienced enough to know that it’s not impossible forever. Although, right now, on this late night alone with my song-to-be, I cannot prove any of this.

One day I’ll nail it.

Today was not that day. And I get to feel utterly useless for a while, yet again. Other days I may feel despicably brilliant, or with a sense that I can will almost any song into motion. It doesn’t always prove to be true, and maybe that’s gotten harder now that my filter for what passes and what doesn’t keeps getting irrevocably stricter. Whatever that means: as I said, it’s mainly about the feeling I am left with in the end. Which is informed by what I am needing to say and hear at the moment.

It may not be within reach right now, but I have to believe I’ll get there. I cannot settle for “that’ll do”. I cannot un-feel this highly intuitive and elusive sense of criteria. If I did, there would be no point to me writing the song. The songwriter’s filter and instinct all you’ve got and yet everything. You start disregarding that and you’re left with nothing. Songs may come of it, but not the songs I am after. I’ve come too far to start that kind of bullshit now. It’s just getting good. Can I keep it up?

Perhaps not today. Not yesterday. In fact, this whole week has been awful, writing-wise.

World-wise, don’t even get me started. There’s so much evil and incompetence at play at the head of great nations and institutions right now, so we have to celebrate each glimmer of hope, each victory. And get to work.

A convenient reminder to self: the song that became Sentimentalist was once a hopeless problem child. I had the music but not the words, and kept trying for four years. I almost gave up. But then I didn't!

Relief will come eventually. Results will materialize. Inspiration will find you. If you can find a way to stay true to your instincts and not be discouraged while navigating the absurdity of your chosen profession and/or the world.

This is what I tell myself, so I might as well pass it on to you.

With love,

SL

PS! Some good news: the Sea Of Sighs vinyls are done printing earlier than anticipated, so we will start shipping in a few weeks. You can still pre-order from the US store and the Nordic store. Enjoy this mostly wordless little album digitally via Bandcamp or all the other places.

There’s not enough time to hear it all, and there may be little point in trying to consume or grasp every single sound of the universe. There’s something out there for everyone, a fact both wonderful and exhausting. But there is point in always searching for new kicks, and the possibility of expanding not just your appreciation for music, but also your own idea of yourself, through music. I am completely reliant on this in order to stay engaged and excited in my work and my life.

Whenever friends appear disenchanted with current music — whatever that might be — I try to ask politely what it is they are seeking. Very often they are not seeking at all. They are disenchanted with what’s being presented to them. This is no way to live life, especially nowadays. If the world merely consisted of what is put in front of us at any given time, we’d all be in trouble. Which, judging by the looks of e v e r y t h i n g, we appear to be (I’m not even gonna start my state of the world-address, because it’s such a theater of the absurd and grotesque right now, but let it be known that I hate fascism and I value democracy and empathy). If you treasure great music and art, you can never stop searching, looking, listening. This applies to every aspect of life, but to music especially seeing as music has become both marginalized and omnipresent in the streaming-era.

Seek and you shall find. Lord knows we need those big musical revelations more than ever. It can be disappointing to no longer find the music you’ve grown accustomed to identifying with reflected in the mainstream, or in sub-cultures, or even written about in music publications or even just the arts pages. The world is not what it used to be. There’s more music available than ever, and less editorial muscle than ever to sift through it. You’ll have to do it yourself. And it can be a relief to be able to connect with music simply as music, cut off from the context of trends, movements or scenes. Even better: music made by people you’ve never seen — artists you wouldn’t recognize if you walked past them on the street.

There’s a whole world of sounds I’ve had the immense joy of discovering over the past 12-13 years, that is largely free-floating and faceless, in the sense that it relies less on words, confession and persona, than song-based music which is typically tied to a singer or band expressing attitudes, ideas and feelings through their words, music and stage presence. Ever since I first started trying to write and sing songs I have felt intimately connected with the music I share to the extent that it becomes a part of your private as well a public identity. The songs, and the aesthetic and emotional truths they convey, have felt almost inseparable from my own persona. When I made my debut album as a teenager, it would’ve felt completely bizarre to me to NOT have my face on the cover of the album. In addition to enjoying the attention, I deeply wanted to be associated with this music — my body, my characteristics felt like the vehicle for all this music, and as such, the natural front. As you grow and expand, you inevitably find new ways of presenting yourself, the music and maybe you even start questioning the limitations you may inflict upon your own music if you adhere too strictly to this deep identification at all times. I’ve thought about this a bunch, and worked on expanding both the music and the self through the last ten years of albums and stage shows.

Technology and streaming has changed the way we listen to music, for better or worse, and many people who listen to my music nowadays might not be able to recognize my face in a police line up. How refreshing!

And of course, there’s also a whole universe out there of artists and composers who do not even remotely fill the role of the singer/songwriter in any shape or form. They maybe don’t even appear on stage to serve as avatars of their art. They just exist in the studio, on the sheet or in the sonic creations they share. They may not even want you to know anything about them other than the music itself. A thought that seems both foreign and liberating to me. Not knowing a musician’s nationality, gender or background can open new rooms and arenas for your own appreciation of art.

This is part of what draws me to a lot of the experimental instrumental music made by artists whose faces I would not recognize on the street, and whose names I often have trouble remembering or pronouncing.

Here are some of my favorite discoveries so far on this ongoing journey through a wordless, sometimes faceless haze, floating onwards through space and time. New music is whatever music you have yet to hear. So here’s to listening, not knowing. And always searching!

The Wind Song by Gigi Masin

The Sinking Of The Titanic by Gavin Bryars

Sacrificial Code by Kali Malone

An Empty Bliss Beyond This World by The Caretaker

Kobresia by Biosphere

Creek by Hiroshi Yoshimura

dlp 4 by William Basinski

Gentle So Gentle by Sarah Davachi

Rosetti Rose / Crystal Garden and a Coda by Harold Budd

blue sky and yellow sunflower by Susumu Yokota

Water Music by Kelly Moran

Dreaming by Jon Hassell

Parades by Masayoshi Fujita and Jan Jelinek

Nathan Daniel’s Tune From Hawaii by Motorpsycho

Wehrmut by Cluster & Eno

A Sea Of Love by Huerco S.

Nådeslås by Maria Kannegaard

This Little Light Of Mine by Donald Shirley

As some of you will already know, I released my first (almost fully) instrumental album a few months ago. It’s called Sea Of Sighs, and I talked about it a bit in my last post. I’ve really appreciated people embracing this music with open ears and minds, and it’s been quite existing to see. So I wanted to put together a psychical version of the album, on limited edition pink vinyl.

The cover art is by Rune Mortensen. I took the cover photo on a bright fall day in Oslo, late September, when the Akers river was flooding the sidewalk.

The backside photo was taken by Hilde Solli in St Paul de Vence in France. Below you can see the sleeves!

You can pre-order Sea Of Sighs from the Nordic store or the US store, whichever if more convenient, and the albums will ship in early May. You can of course also just stream or download the album at any moment!

Sending love and faith to all. I am currently writing the next album, so if I feel far away, know that I’m doing the work, and always on the cusp of the next song I wanna play for you.

SL

But wilder things have been, stranger yet to come. Happy New Year, and thanks for listening and following through yet another one.

While I’ve been working away on the next album this past year, I’ve also gone on a few journeys, playing a few shows here and there, in Japan, USA, London and Norway, catching Stevie Wonder in NYC, Joni Mitchell in LA, vacationing in Venice. Living a little.

On one of these journeys, while having a few days off in Tokyo, I started working on an instrumental piece. I had felt inspired by a concert I went to a few nights before, when I got to experience the Japanese artist Ichiko Aoba. It made me think about creating pieces that could function as anticipation music to be played in a concert hall while the audience are waiting for the concert to start. Or home alone, when you need to get away. I first used pre-existing elements that I had lying around from previous sessions and shows, that I looped and stretched and messed around with.

When I returned home to Norway I started another piece, using a string quartet arrangement combined with endless loops of Alexander von Mehren’s piano from a live recording of my song “Patience”. I sent these two first pieces to Jørgen Trœen for some input, tweaking and mix. I also had Kato assemble some more string quartet sessions in Bergen that I thought might come in handy. In 2022 I had him write two string arrangements for a special Avatars show in Bergen. These arrangements now served as starting points for new instrumental pieces. We went back and forth, tweaking and reimagining these little pieces of more esoteric and minimalist music.

The results are “Sea Of Sighs”, a 6-track EP of largely instrumental, minimalist majestic ambient music which was finalized right before Christmas, and which will be available digitally next Friday. I’ll share more later, once the full EP is out, including a playlist of relevant inspirations.

Keen listeners may come to recognize several elements and chord sequences from songs of the past, so if this collection plays like a fever dreamish Easter Egg-hunt through fragments of my songs, that’s just grand. It’s been over decade since I developed a serious appreciation of abstract and ambient music, and some of what some people call Neo-classical tendencies. I don’t always know what to call it, but I’ve long labeled it patient music in my own mind. I gravitate towards a need for patient music more often than not. At times I want to call it majestic minimalism! Other times it’s more subdued and discrete. Inspirations come from many different sources, but for this collection I want to mention Kali Malone, Gigi Masin, Ryuichi Sakamoto and Norway’s own maestro of ambient, Biosphere, specifically.

For now you can listen to Showtime 2.1, which is out today — and pre-save Sea Of Sighs on Bandacamp or elsewhere, that way you’ll have it when it drops on January 10.

A lot of Sea Of Sighs music will also be a part of my two big performances at the Oslo Opera House on January 12. There are still around 100 tickets left for the first show, but they are going fast and the shows will sell out shortly.

As some of you may have noticed and heard, this year’s annual Christmas cover was a version of Chappell Roan’s instant classic «Good Luck, Babe!». You can download it from Bandcamp, or stream it via Stereogum, and read on from what I wrote on the night we recorded it:

«It’s 8pm in Bergen, Norway on December 21st. I just finished recording vocals for this year’s cover. Producer Matias Téllez and I first joined in this tradition together in 2013 (I had tried doing it on my own a few years earlier, but it was not nearly as fun). If you’re new to the tradition: we pick the huge hit we feel most compelled to cover at the end of each year, and record and mix it in one day. Then we share it with fans and followers the next day. Tonight, when Matias is done mixing this year’s track, we’re fortunate enough that we once again can go out to eat, drink and be merry, and then wish each other Merry Christmas, or God Jul, as we say around these parts. We’ve spent a lot of time in the studio together this year, recording my next album, and next year we’ll record some more. But for now this is our final offering of 2024: our interpretation of Chappell Roan’s glorious «Good Luck, Babe». This year’s choice is one we picked with some hesitation, simply because both the song itself and the recording of it, is so perfect, meaningful and strong. It’s of course one of the biggest hits in a year full of really wonderful big hits. A very competitive year, so many huge songs that united more people than they polarized. Lord knows we needed it. Enormous, beautiful pop songs won’t save the world or mankind, or end wars or the slaughtering of always-innocent children. And the way the world seems to be going now, many of us feel helpless, and even complicit in every gruesome thing humans inflict upon this planet and each other. «You’d have to stop the world just to stop the feeling». The truth will come out. It cannot be contained, or resisted, forever. «Good Luck, Babe» is a punch in the gut for the way it calls out, not just its object of desire for not daring to live truthfully, but also society for making it so damn hard to be who you really are, and love who you really love. Love can be challenging, but the challenge at the center of «Good Luck, Babe» is more complex than even that. This was the part of the song I most wanted to protect. There is no wonder why the original is so impactful, and even if our version only poses the question: what if «Good Luck, Babe» was arranged by the late great Ryuichi Sakamoto, maybe that’s already reason enough for yet another version to exist. I’m wishing you and yours love, compassion and music, always.»

Agreed, with love,

SL

PS! I wrote and recorded a deeply existential and sincere Christmas song last year that I forgot to tell you about. It’s too late now, but here it is, you can even try to sing along!

New York was colder than I remembered. The city was not in its most seductive state when I arrived in January ‘05. I had previously visited on several giddy tours and press trips, during several seasons: at first, around the end of October 2002, and then during the blizzard of February ‘03, opening for Nada Surf, and again later that summer during the black out when we walked from Ground Zero to Harlem in one sweltering, strange day. I had stayed there for a short week in November of 2003 while mixing the Two Way Monologue album at a legendary studio near Times Square. I had returned for a TWM cover photo shoot with Mick Rock, just a month later. And again, on the final evening of 2003, on a stopover on my way to a much needed and yet restless solo vacation in Hawaii. Throughout 2004 I returned to New York multiple times, for press, solo shows, full band-shows, showcases, Conan, etc. And then eventually, sometime in fall ‘04, it was there that I got suddenly and secretly engaged. As it turned out, New York was a happening place.

New York had quickly become a many splendored thing to me, and then, suddenly, it was also supposed to be a home. That took a moment. My modest, empty first apartment, in south Williamsburg, was not nearly as glamorous (or warm) as the chic hotel rooms I had grown accustomed to and spoiled with at the Soho Grand by my record label. Everyday life in the city was new to me. I was exhausted and wanted to disappear into the void that is New York City. And at the same time, I hoped to instantly feel inspired and plugged into the never ending creative flow of the city. A tall order.

After a few false starts, not only related to the city, but also young confused love, growing pains and a minor identity crisis, I ended up staying for real. And by 2006 I lived in 10 Downing Street, right on 6th avenue and Bleecker street.

It was a fresh start, Manhattan felt exciting and intoxicating for a while, although it also felt like being a part of the local scenery on a very expensive 24/7 Sex & The City sightseeing bus tour. So after a few years, I returned to Williamsburg, and stayed there for 10 more years. Joyful, productive, heartbreaking and soul-searching years.

And yada, yada, yada, tonight and tomorrow night we celebrate the Two Way Monologue 20th anniversary reissue at one of the cities finest and most vibrant protectors of New York’s vibrant musical scene, Le Poisson Rouge.

I’m playing all of Two Way Monologue, in sequence, backed by a string quartet. And then I’ll do it again, in Chicago on Tuesday. And again, in LA on Friday, Oct 18.

This whole tour has secretly been booked to coincide with another concert, not my own: Oct 20, when I will be attending Joni Mitchell’s jam at Hollywood Bowl. So there, something for everyone, even me!

I will return with more, but for now there’s all this. And this. And this. And if you can’t get enough of the old polaroids, there’s this new video that my friend Jon put together for the Casio Version of Days That Are Over, which is included on the digital remastered edition of Two Way Monologue which is also out today.

Much love,
SL

September Something is another slice of the Two Way Monologue pie never served. The song that felt like the centerpiece of my ambition at the time revealed itself to be impossible to capture without blushing. I was 19 and trying to find a way to articulate what it was like to suddenly be seen, celebrated, judged and pigeonholed. Maybe I was trying to write my “Jenny From The Block”. To insist, mainly to locals, that “I get it”. That I understand how I may come across up there, in the spotlight. Rest assured, I am still the same old me. Who?

I may have protested too much. And the song bit over so much more than the little I could chew at the time. Something was off with September Something, and it gradually dawned on me every time we tried to capture it in the studio. What was I trying to say? Was it satire?

All I wanted to do was trace my humble journey in life so far, from being born into a home about to break, to finding purpose and joy in songwriting, performance and the freedom of self-definition — all while having the nerve to succeed while making it look relatively easy. Maybe this is the hardest type of song to write? Already sounds like a train wreck. And it wasn’t. But it was a hot mess, uncalibrated and bizarre. I had too much (self-)confidence in the first draft of any song I wrote at that time. What I did not have was the capacity to truly consider the weight, or lack thereof, of my erratic words and self-aware impulses.

So September Something was wisely abandoned. And it would seem the only thing I found worth saving from it, was the instrumental coda at the end. I remember having moved to Brooklyn, early 2005, trying to make a song out of that chord sequence. “Somewhere In Space” was the name of the results. A song that I would then take to producer Raphael Saadiq in LA, for a recording session that resulted in three songs that also never saw the light of day. But that’s a story for another time. I was entering the era of second-guessing, but on the plus side I had discovered In ‘n Out Burgers.

That same coda eventually found its way into the score I did for Dan In Real Life, which was a more pleasant home than from whence it had drifted.

But when time came to dig deep into the Two Way Monologue archives, September Something was still on my mind and in my heart. I just hoped I could find it in my current heart to live with the words as I wrote them in 2002. I couldn’t! So I tried to write some new ones, updating my self-mythology way past Y2K. Which meant I had to record some new vocals, allowing me to try and harmonize with that old self of mine. No easy task.

The first line of the song is actually sung by Sondre ‘02. The rest is mainly present day. I kept what I could, and rewrote the rest. It’s not the masterpiece I set out to make, but it’s something I can live with, that’s still in the spirit of what I abandoned on a hard drive for 22 years. Metaphorically, this whole process is on point.

Shout out to Kato Ådland, my then-guitarist, and now recurring co-producer, who did his best to restore September Something to some semblance of glory, without breaking the character of 2002. And to the beautiful musicians that played with me at the time: Morten Skage on bass, Ole Ludvig Krüger on drums, both of The Faces Downs-fame!

I hope you’ll enjoy the efforts, flaws and all. The reason I felt compelled to share this song, despite everything, was perhaps that I recognized an involuntarily exposed truth in it. Ego, vanity, self-awareness, and also the need to disguise or re-brand these vices (isn’t this basically social media?). They’re often essential parts of the stew, along with more palatable phenomenon such as humility, hard work and selflessness. If only one can learn to balance these components. In the words of Elvis Costello: “Give yourself away and find the fake in me”.

September Something perhaps sought to illustrate how I was in on the joke, but in its original version what came out was not particularly eloquent or charming, not that it need be. And either way, I’m not even confident that my 2024 upgrade solves any of these problems. But I’ve tried to honor my original ambitions, without catering too much to my current sense of self. The song remains a righteous attempt at something. An early attempt at the freedom of self-definition. Or whatever that was.

Self-deprecation can be disarming, or obnoxious. I had yet to learn. Have I?

September Something is a part of the 20th anniversary remastered double vinyl edition of Two Way Monologue that comes out Oct 11. You can pre-order here if you prefer the US store, or here if you prefer the Nordic store — it really just depends what’s closest to where you live.

September Something will also be featured with full charts, chords and all, in the Two Way Monologue Songbook that comes out the same day. You can pre-order that and its companion, Avatars Of Love, from those same above links, now.

I will play TWM shows in the US, Japan and London this fall. New York sold out so we added an extra date there, on release day!

Here’s where I’m at with September Something:

I was born too near the end

And the moon was getting smaller

At the peak of a weakening phase

Waning Gibbous raised a scholar

Ok, baby boy, let’s see what else you can do

September was my true love’s tune

’82:

I was born too near the end

To save the day forever after

Someone misspoke or I miss dreamt

Cue my mother’s nervous laughter

Ok, little man, let’s see what else you can do

September was my true love’s tune

There’s no place like any broken home

I was so wrong, took for granted

I could save the disenchanted

Help you help me defy the drama

Golden boys got no time for trauma

’92:

I was never bored again

Sweet delusions made of grandeur

Every sketch of song an invisible friend

Every man a father figure

Hey there, wonder boy, let’s see what else you can do

September was my true love’s tune

So ’02:

What a time to be alive

What an anxious little lover

Taking everything in stride

It takes a lifetime to recover

So tell me what you want, could it be yourself?

Could it be me?

So tell me what you want, could it be yourself?

Could it be?

I remember “Aja” on the minidisc you wrecked

Overwriting everything the body won’t forget

As I walked from another broken home to another broken home to another broken home at last

I was so young, took for granted

I could make the world enchanted

Help you help me spin the drama

“Golden boy in the time of trauma”

Love me, love me

Say you love me

I will take your love for granted

Help me help me, I can’t help it

Say you love me

Do you really? Do!

September was my true love’s tune

September something, eighty what

September something, eighty what

September something, eighty what

2012

I was born again, again

I got dumped for someone younger

Here it is, your moment of zen

The prescription is more hunger

So tell me what you want, could it be yourself?

Could it be me?

So tell me what you want, could it be yourself?

Could it be?

With love,

SL

It’s, um, just me. It’s my name!

«Ok. What’s your name?»

Eh… Sondre Lerche.

«What kind of a strange name is that?»

I’ve had multiple variations of this conversation since I was in my late teens. Especially in America, where the idea of a band called Sondre Lerche seemed even more preposterous than anywhere else. Which is fair, cause I’m not a band.

Whenever I gain insights into the complicated inner-lives of some of my colleagues who are in proper bands — some of them highly successful one way or the other — I usually feel quite thankful that I am not in a band. All I ever wanted to be was a highly autonomous artist on my own terms. I’ve built a life around this desire to create and communicate music that feels urgent and crucial to who I am.

However, I’m left with one major takeaway from revisiting the Two Way Monologue album recently, while at the same time being in the midts of writing and recording new music: profound gratitude that none of these experiences have — or would have — occurred if I were entirely on my own. Like Zach Efron’s character in the instant classic Netflix turkey A Family Affair, I too have grown accepting of the fact that I am no island. So while I continue my deeply individualistic lifelong endeavor, I count myself extremely fortunate in that I get to share it with my musicians, producers and several more who contribute immensely to fulfilling the scope of my ambitions along the way.

In that sense I suppose I get the best of both worlds. Cause it still seems quite wild and impossible to me that some adults are in an actual band over the course of a lifetime. Rock bands, especially, look more and more peculiar, the older (and bigger) they get. I often look at photos of middle aged men in bands and marvel at the strange unions they form, years on from what originally drove them together as young adults. To be universally and forever attached to a shared identity like that, to me, would seem claustrophobic. I don’t know how they do it, I’m just grateful I still get to do what I do the way I want to do it.

Today I had a great first meet over Zoom with Beth Meyers, the woman in charge of creating string quartet arrangements for the extra special Two Way Monologue dates in New York, Chicago, Los Angeles and London this fall and December. The thought of bringing some of the less-played songs back to life and maybe even reinventing a few of them on stage is exciting. Thankfully, this is the kind of work I can outsource to trusted professionals, rather than sit with it all alone. It would easily feel as if going backwards in time to repossess my old self, alone in a room. I need to be writing the new songs!

Developing a shared language through collaboration takes a lot of time and dedication. I’ve felt highly blessed many times over because I’ve had so many beautiful collaborations. And the most joyful ones go on and on to this day. Those relationships and, by extension, the language we develop, are the most valuable tools I have at my disposal to most efficiently get to where I hope to go with the songs I write at any given time. This also requires that the people I work with are willing always reassess where I’m at whenever we start something new, and that they are curious and open to find out where we’re going this time around. These are not skills that just anyone possesses. Trust me.

This is probably the main reason I’ve not felt compelled to constantly chase new producers or a new group of musicians for each new album I make. When I find my people I pray that I can keep them engaged and excited to stick around for the next one, and the next one and so forth. I’m not looking to lease someone else’s sound or vision. I am carving out my own, and I treasure the seemingly endless hours I spend alone with the prospect of a song, trying to conceive something that might be worth sharing with others. But in order to do so I will need a little bit of help from the friends who know where I’ve been, what more I might be capable of, and who wish to understand where I wanna go. As opposed to constantly having to retell my story from scratch to strangers. Collaborations that are strong and rewarding enough to develop over time allow me to explain myself less and less — while also becoming more and more hilarious as the archives of silly references expands along with the body of work.

And quite contrary to what I get the sense that some tend to think, I feel a lot freer and bolder in collaboration with those that know me well.

I write this having recently been reminded by the Two Way Monologue 20th Anniversary remaster that there’s plenty of reason to be thankful that I still get to work with some of the great talents that made that old record so special.

Kato Ådland was my guitar player at the time, but he stepped up during the early phase of demoing the TWM songs, as both bandleader, engineer and arranger. I think he could tell I was in the process of biting over a little more than I could chew with some of the songs I was writing and trying to write, and he really took the time to encourage me and help bridge the gap between my ambition and my abilities. We’ve worked together ever since, and he’s produced and recorded some of my most meaningful songs, including Bad Law, Dead Of The Night, Soft Feelings, I Can’t See Myself Without You, Magnitude Of Love, and so forth. We were just in the studio again last month, recording new songs. And they sound like nothing we’ve ever done before.

The co-producer/mixer on TWM, Jørgen Trœen, was instrumental in mixing and mastering Avatars Of Love. He also mastered Pleasure and Patience, and also produced Duper Sessions back in the day. A wizard!

The string arranger Sean O’Hagan from one of my favorite ever bands, The High Llamas, worked on both Faces Down, Two Way Monologue, Heartbeat Radio and Avatars Of Love. Last month we ran into each other at Lyse Netter, a fantastic music and arts festival in Moss, a little outside Oslo, and got to perform together. I am now the age Sean was when we first met. Longterm and long distance relationships like these constantly stretch my sense of time and perspective. It’s wild and beautiful.

Another wild thing that just occurred to me: on the opening track of Two Way Monologue — the instrumental Love You, which picks up the same chord sequence and riff that Faces Down had faded out with — there’s background chatter and ambiance that I recorded at Logen Bar in Bergen on March 30th, 2003. I remember I was briefly home between tours to finish the album, and we were all going out after a session to watch some friends play at a local bar. That night I heard a young singer/songwriter by the name of Matias Téllez for the first time. He was barely 14 years old, and he blew us all away with his fearless musicianship and bold sensitivity. Less than ten years later our paths had crossed again, via his tremendous project Young Dreams and a European tour we did together, and we found ourselves in his recording studio recording the song Sentimentalist, which he produced, along with a bunch of other tracks on the Please album. We’ve worked together ever since, and had a fantastic time last month recording some hot new songs with my drummer Dave and keyboardist Alexander, who were, typically, on fire.

As for my band; Dave, Alexander and Chris, who plays the bass, I hope that we will be able to take super hot band photos and play music together when we are twice the age we are now, even though I’ll always be a solo artist with a complicated name, blessed with a ferocious band of friends. With ever more new songs to tell our stories, and renewed joy and inspiration in revisiting some of the old ones that we can’t help remembering.

I’ll be seeing you!

With love,
SL

A few weeks ago I listened through the newly remastered Two Way Monologue album. It’s the first time I’ve heard the album in one sitting since we finalized the recording sometime in 2003. From Love You to Maybe You're Gone. And beyond. If you’ve been with for a minute, you may recognize Two Way Monologue as my second album. A follower on Instagram reminded me that it came out March 9th, 2004. On October 11th, 2024, I’m reissuing the album on vinyl with some never-before-shared bonus tracks. This post will mainly be about those tracks and that time in my life, and how it relates to the here and now

And what a trip it’s been, from Monologue to Avatars, basically. My immediate impression upon hearing TWM again confirmed my notion that these two albums are some kind of kindred spirits — only separated by nearly twenty years of life. Hearing Two Way Monologue now I could feel myself aching and stretching towards another sense of freedom and another level of expression in music. It was something I couldn't quite grasp as the time — a need for more space, more adventure and clarity of emotion, channeling a more esoteric state of mind. If I don't quite feel that I achieved any or all of this, I say so with the sense that I did achieve something else worth capturing. The album strives for expressions way beyond my reach at the time, especially in terms of words and singing. To me it sounds like I’m wrestling both my limitations and my abilities. I'm not quite sure what was most frustrating to me at the time: all that came so easy, or everything that was so hard-won. 

There's a beauty and brutal honesty to these very visible growing pains, and my continuous project of self-liberation, agency and identity through music and performance. Hearing it again now, in hindsight, with extra warm sonic clarity — remastered by Jørgen Træen, who mixed and co-produced Two Way Monologue back in the day — was overwhelming and grand.

And as it turns out, I had reunited with Jørgen on some of Avatars Of Love just a few years ago, so us revisiting Two Way Monologue together was maybe just another full circle moment. 

I remember interviewers often asking me at the time: is this thematically a concept album, what with the title and several songs depicting various failures to communicate? I hadn't even given it a single thought. One could argue that I was not yet thematically conscious. I just wrote one song after another. I had landed on the album title, cause it was such an obviously strong song title, and everything else had felt more or less contrived. I remember threatening my label that I’d name the album «I wish I were you, Scooby Doo». I don’t think I was joking. In the end I was wise enough to realize Two Way Monologue would make the best album title. But not wise enough to have made the connection that seemed so obvious and intentional to everyone else; that Two Way Monologue was a collection of songs about the struggle to express oneself and communicate with clarity in real life. 

Some of these songs were written right after I had finished recording my debut, Faces Down, while anxiously awaiting the end of my high school years so Faces Down could come out and life could begin. Soon thereafter I found myself touring the world and basking in the newfound attention of a global audience. And just as I thought things might wind down so I could start recording the next one, the US label Astralwerks decided to release my debut in North America, a full year after it had been released in Europe and Asia. 

I was 19 and a pretty strange combination of calm, cool and extremely ambitious and driven in terms of all that was going on career-wise at the time. The interest from the US took me by delightful surprise. For any Norwegian artist in 2002, the US seemed a dimension entirely out of reach, a sphere as distant as any galaxy out there. And there I was, on a plane to NYC for the first time, straight from the first few weeks of trying to record Two Way Monologue at home in Bergen. 

When I first courted US and Canadian audiences with songs from Faces Down, the songs that were to become Two Way Monologue remained my little secret. But as I continued touring the USA and Canada throughout 2003, first opening for Nada Surf, then Jason Mraz, I started trying out some of the new songs in concert. I remember doing It's Over, with Ed Harcourt on piano. Days That Are Over had been with me a while, I wrote that in my hotel room after shooting my first ever music video, for You Know So Well, in Oslo, fall of 2000. Wet Ground was written around the same time, while I still lived with my mom and stepdad, and ended up on Two Way Monologue in the shape of my solitaire home demo recording, captured as soon as I had received my first ever songwriter’s royalty check and was able to get a mortgage from the bank to buy my own apartment. I was living, if not the dream, a dream.

Other songs on the album were last minute add-ons and bursts of inspiration: towards the end of the sessions we felt like the album could use a couple of songs that were more structurally and emotionally direct. In response, I quickly wrote On The Tower, Track You Down and It's Our Job, sometime in January of 2003. The latter two recordings maintained a lot of elements from my ramshackle home demos paired with my band of musicians. While it’s hard for me to imagine the album without these three songs at this point, I still sometimes feel these and other lyrics might have benefited from another round of considerations and rewriting. But that’s the beauty of making a record: it remains a document of both your abilities and limitations, neither of which you were completely aware of at the time. 

The addition of those three songs meant that other key tunes that had been in the mix had to be excluded from the album. One of them was, in my mind, supposed to be the centerpiece, no less. But the excitement and self-confidence with which I had written the song gradually evaporated with each attempt we made at recording the song. By the time we were mixing the album, September Something was not even finalized, and remained incomplete and alone on my hard drive. Until now! 

Sifting through the archives and vaults for this reissue, I was reminded of September Something’s existence. I remembered the burst of inspiration I felt at first, and the humiliating disappointment I felt as I realized it was nobody's favorite, not even my own, and certainly not with those lyrics. Rediscovering it now I could sympathize with what the original lyrics were trying but failing to express. And I felt compelled to give my old self a hand. I tasked my former guitar player Kato Ådland with rearranging and finalizing the original recording, using as much as possible from the 2002 sessions, including my old vocals where possible. Kato was essential to making Two Way Monologue happen, far beyond his role as my guitar player at the time. He went above and beyond to try and understand my knotty visions for these songs and recorded all the band demos at his studio. We've worked together ever since. In order for me to want to share September Something with the world, the lyrics would need a lot of help and revisions. I gave it another go, wanting to fulfill my intentions from back then, with the added luxury of time, growth and perspective. The lyrics were originally an attempt at a cheeky self-referential, self-deprecating, self-commenting tale of my life thus far, but it was all over the place and felt awkward even then. Returning to it now, I tried not to overthink it, and leave some of the awkwardness in. It feels good to have been able to free the song of its composer's original failure to rise to the challenge. And to get to unite my 2002 voice with the sound of my current self, as we trade lines and harmonize, 22 years apart. 

And if you get to the end of it, you may recognize a piece of music that in fact did survive this song, and went on to be heard by more people than probably anything else that actually ended up on the Two Way Monologue album… 

Discovering the music of Prefab Sprout in 2001 was the single biggest influence on my songwriting on Two Way Monologue. Their music changed my whole outlook on what I was trying to do as a writer, and deeply spoke to me as a musician, teenager, son, boyfriend, dreamer, ego… Prefab was everything. Chief-songwriter Paddy McAloon captured it all and continues to inspire my work to this day. I consider him one of the finest songwriters alive at this moment. Among the many songs inspired by this initial rush of Prefab-inspiration was a song called Rejection #5. A song that's — to put it mildly — neither the greatest song ever written, nor anywhere near the greatest song I've ever written (I’m actually curious to know what song holds that title, in your opinion). It must’ve made sense at the time. I remember it feeling new and meaningful. In retrospect I see it pointing more towards my fourth album, Phantom Punch, than anything else.

I was so in awe of the nervous energy exhibited on the debut album by Prefab Sprout, Swoon, that I reached out to their bass player, Martin McAloon, asking if he'd be able to replicate some of that vibe on my recorded attempt at early Prefab-anxiety. He was gracious and game, and recorded his part at home in Newcastle. As I received his recording, I was swooning beyond belief! And although the song was not quite up to snuff — and I was not quite ready to embody this nervous excitement and energy yet — I've always treasured having a demo lying around with Martin McAloon playing beautiful fretless bass. It's time you all hear it.

Another vault-discovery was the demo of a song I had completely forgotten about, You Are Impossible. I believe this was another one that I wrote and recorded in my new apartment, trying to come up with a few more songs for the album, in January 2003. For some reason I never played this one for my band or my producers, and it remained forgotten by all, even myself. When I recently found it on a dusty CD-R, it was the first time I got to experience hearing one of my own songs without having any recollection of writing it. It was quite the strange sensation. But more importantly: I quite liked it! 

And so I decided to task my current keyboardist Alexander von Mehren and bass player Chris Holm with recording, arranging and producing the track. I asked them to be faithful to the spirit of my 2003 demo, and to keep in mind everything they remember about the Two Way Monologue era and sound. And they would know: they were regulars at my shows back then, two years my juniors, attentively fan-boying when Two Way Monologue came out. Since 2011 I've had the pleasure of playing with the two of them, and Dave Heilman (who you'll also hear on drums on this recording), on stage and on my albums since then. We are also joined by old friends, singers Julian Berntzen and Nathalie Nordnes, who both sang on the original TWM album and were important new people in my life around the time all of this went down.

I chose to leave the You Are Impossible lyrics exactly as they were, and sang the song at the best of my 2024 abilities. I don’t understand all the words, or even all the melodic leaps and transitions 2003 me chose to make, but I stand by that guy. My voice has changed, and hearing it on the 2003 demo — and pretty much all of Two Way Monologue — I was struck by how polite, gentle and bird-like I sounded back then. It was another strange time in my life. I can never go back, but I am more than happy and proud to revisit.

The Two Way Monologue 20th Anniversary remaster can be pre-ordered from the US store, or the Nordic store.

In the web stores you’ll also find pre-order options for two new songbooks: a Two Way Monologue songbook and an Avatars Of Love songbook. These are the first two in a series that will cover all my albums.

There will be just a handful of shows to celebrate and commemorate the Two Way Monologue era, in the US, Japan and UK. Because I am busy working on the next one, there will be no further touring this year.

But with this first attempt at Substack, I do hope we can remain in touch. Thanks for reading and listening on. And if Oct 11 seems far away, you can listen to You Are Impossible as many times as you like in the meantime!

SL

Subscribe now