Sondre Lerche Announces New Album Acrobats, Shares Lush Lead Single “Little Kids”

Sondre Lerche has announced a new album, and it arrives with the kind of soft-focus emotional drift he does so well. Acrobats, out 8/21 on PLZ/Virgin, is the Norwegian singer-songwriter’s follow-up to 2022’s Avatars Of Love. Before the full record lands, he’s shared “Little Kids,” a glowing new single built around Sean O’Hagan’s string arrangements, performed by the Stockholm Studio Orchestra.

The album runs just eight songs, but Lerche didn’t exactly keep the process contained. He recorded it across nine studios and brought in a mix of longtime collaborators and Norwegian jazz musicians. None of the songs from last year’s surprise EP Turning Up The Heat Again appear on the new album, though that release helped set the stage for what came next. The EP itself followed a familiar seasonal ritual: every Christmas, Lerche has been sending Stereogum a new cover, and last year he turned in Lady Gaga and Bruno Mars’ “Die With A Smile.” Shortly after that, he dropped the EP, which marked his first new songs in five years.

“Little Kids” leans into memory without getting sentimental in a lazy way. Lerche describes it as a song that moves from “the first verse’s innocent rejection” to “the third verse’s plunge into premature adulthood,” tracing the way youthful attempts at love, friendship and intimacy can look different once time has done its work. As he puts it, the song is about “forgiving who you were and who you were with” and about seeing old photos and realizing you were younger than you thought you were. “It’s personal but highly universal,” he says.

The video follows that same inward pull. Lerche says that for the first time in his career, he wanted a clip that actually visualized elements of the lyrics rather than pushing against them. He worked with Norwegian auteur Lea Meyer, whom he’d met at an event some time earlier and felt would understand the song immediately. Drawing some inspiration from the 1970 film A Swedish Love Story, the video introduces three different couples, each with different ages and different challenges. Lerche calls the result a testament to Meyer’s “talent and unique touch,” and says he’s proud of the work her team put in.

From the first verse’s innocent rejection to the third verse’s plunge into premature adulthood,