Phantom Punch

This tasteful and handsome sensitive indie-rock crooner has been huge in his Norwegian homeland since at least 2002, but even if he got arrested in the United States, it's doubtful many folks would notice. Phantom Punch, his most terse and powerful album to date, is an unexpectedly fun update of literate, catchy upbeat pop-rock. The scuttlebutt is that Lerche was influenced greatly by the energetic punk-pop of his elder peer Elvis Costello after opening for him on a tour in 2006, and the result is a 180 degree turn from the jazzy stylings of 2006's Duper Sessions. The production is raw and excellent, less subtle and encumbered than his first albums, but his backing band Faces Down really pull through here. A couple songs overuse dynamic compression; that everything-loud-at-once wall-of-sound might work well for the Killers, but not everyone needs it. Still, unlike, say, Snow Patrol, Lerche has shown himself perfectly capable of making a mainstream modern rock album that's compelling, eclectic and entirely entertaining, all without selling even a shred of his soul. The only thing Lerche needs now is an audience; someone get this guy a stadium to fill, and quickly!