Blog: PopMatters

The radio plays on and on. The heartbeat flat-lines. The Norwegian transplant Sondre Lerche, a music industry veteran at only 27, possesses considerable talent, but his new album Heartbeat Radio finds him working too hard toward no discernible end. The album is about love in its most mundane forms -- passing the morning paper back and forth over tea, squabbling, driving, chatting. It's a minor work for minor moods, but it mostly fails to achieve even its modest intentions. There's a sort of ill-fitting...