Video: Sondre Lerche, ‘Cut’

Kevin Bronson on January 5th, 2022

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Prolific singer-songwriter Sondre Lerche has announced he will release a new album — a double-LP at that — titled “Avatars of Love” on April 1.

His album “Patience” (and its 18-track deluxe version) had just come out in 2020, but the Norwegian songwriter, who’d been based in L.A. since moving west from Brooklyn in 2018, caught the writing bug while on a solo tour of his home country that year. While in Bergen, he teamed up with friends to begin recording the songs. The album features long-distance collaborators such as Brooklyn-based Felicia Douglass (Dirty Projectors), L.A.’s Mary Lattimore, Japan’s CHAI, and Brazil’s Rodrigo Alarcon and Ana Müller.

“‘Patience’ was the album I always wanted to make. ‘Avatars Of Love’ is the album I never thought I’d be able to make,” Lerche says.

“Cut” and “Turns Out I’m Sentimental After All” are the latest two singles, the former coming with a Jon Danovic-directed video.

“I originally wrote ‘Cut’ imagining a love affair between actors on a film set, where the lines are constantly blurred between what is real, what’s performative,” Lerche says. “I saw it as a film noir, but during the recording it no longer felt black and white, it felt colorful and erotic and it reminded me of some of Brian DePalma’s ’80s neo-noir films that I love. The music video also captures some of this.”

He adds: “‘Turns Out I’m Sentimental After All’ was the last song I wrote before leaving L.A. right as the pandemic started. I like the contrast between it and ‘Cut,’ which it follows on the album. ‘Cut’ tries to capture an ephemeral feeling that may not even be real, while ‘Sentimental’ can’t help but fall back into nostalgia, while second guessing a central life choice. I remember thinking of ‘Both Sides Now,’ and how Joni [Mitchell] wrote that so young, and how she probably could add many new verses and perspectives to it later in life, if need be. And I thought about some of my own songs where I made statements that no longer correspond with the way I see the world or myself. So it’s also an ode to songs and the many truths and phases they document and contain. It’s a very special and tender song to me.”

||| Watch: The video for “Cut”