Sondre Lerche - Pleasure

After a few albums in a row that staked out Sondre Lerche's claim as one of the better sophisticated pop craftsmen around, especially on 2014's Please, the Norwegian crooner takes a whiplash-inducing left turn on his 2017 album Pleasure. He carefully sets aside the guitar-heavy, almost middle-of-the-road pop sound he'd so carefully developed in favor of an approach that relies on programmed drums and loads of icy synthesizers, and mostly puts guitars in the passenger seat. Gone are the carefully arranged songs that sound like gems from the early Aztec Camera or Prefab Sprout catalogs.