Field Trip: Sondre Lerche @ The Paradise In Boston

So, like many of you, we here at H.A.D. tend to travel around the holidays. When we do, we try to keep our eyes open for shows at those foreign locales: Seeing bands in different venues can really mix up the feel, and give you a nice change of pace in a new city. After missing Sondre Lerche in SF a few weeks back, we were determined to check out his set at the Paradise while we were in Boston. The Paradise is a favorite venue in our former city of residence. It's not dissimilar to the independent, but it's even smaller. All seats in the house are great, and it always serves to make for a high quality, intimate show.

Sondre Lerche was in fine form on this particular evening, and brought a very warm crowd a completely awesome set of tunes. He played a lot of new stuff off of Phantom Punch, as well as songs from the Lerche-penned (unbeknownst to us!) soundtrack to "Dan In Real Life". Lerche played both acoustic and electric, and did a great job at keeping the set moving. There were a couple spots where it slowed down significantly, but it always kicked back into gear in short time.

It was nice to see Lerche focus on so much new material: his older albums are great, but they had a certain uniformity to them that seems to be disappearing in the newer releases. The new songs have much more distinct character. In short, Sondre's songwriting is improving. Not such a surprise when your first album comes out when you're what...17?

As we mentioned before, Sondre Lerche never seems to disappoint, and even solo his show was riveting start to finish. If you haven't seen him, keep your eyes open for next time: this is too good to pass up!

More photos at the H.A.D. flick feed.