iSound

Everywhere you turn in the music industry these days, people will tell you that music is in crisis. Then along comes someone like Sondre Lerche to restore your faith and whose second album, Two Way Monologue, really ought to be sub-titled ‘Crisis? What Crisis?’

Now 21, Sondre Lerche emerged from Bergen, Norway three years ago with his debut album, Faces Down. The youngest of four siblings, he grew up on classic 1980s pop and began learning the guitar at the age of eight. He wrote his first song at 14 and was playing acoustic nights in a Bergen club when he wasn’t even legally old enough even to be in there. By the time he was 17, he was signed to Virgin Records. A brace of toe-in-the-water EPs introduced him to the Norwegian charts. But the release of his debut album Faces Down, recorded in 2000, was deliberately delayed until after he had finished school the following year.

Ambitious, diverse and packed full of gorgeous melodies tempered with tougher edges, F...