In the wake of Elliott Smith's untimely demise, fans of earnest singer-songwriters are looking for a new figure to fill the aching void left by the troubled troubadour. While he doesn't quite bleed pain the way Smith so often did, Norwegian-born crooner Sondre Lerche shares his gift for sketching songs in elliptical understatement and cursive melancholy. As you listen to Two Way Monologues' parade of hushed soliloquies, it's hard to imagine what could have caused the barely twenty-one year-old Lerche's soul to ache this heavily. Then again, you're never too young to be crushed by the fallibility of love in all its various guises, or to feel the pain of the changing tides of adulthood.

The first thing that really jumps out at you about Two Way Monologue is that it lacks its predecessor's exuberant, puddle-jumping panache. But when you stop and look at things closely, you realize that the progressions Lerche has made on the songwriting front more than atone for any zeal he's trimmed off the back end. There are no finer examples than "Days That are Over"'s sumptuous brass and string arrangements, which are as sweet a slice of vintage, country-tinged Nashville soul as you'll ever hear, or the plucky "On the Tower", which wafts by on gently strummed guitars and a mellifluous, slow-burning ambiance. But it's not all heartbroken meditative flutter 'round Lerche's way, as the maritime drumming and jaunty synthesizer lines of the title track so joyously announce. The loping, Disney-like orchestrations of "It's Over" recall the halcyon days of Pentangle, and "It's Too Late"'s descending tubular bells and blissful glissandi recall Jon Brion's wonderfully skewed solo works.

As Two Way Monologue progresses through its preening human emotional cycle, Lerche encounters the same problems as nouveau-classicist performers Norah Jones and Michele Buble: his arrangements rise and fall in overly predictable patterns, settling into a comfortable groove and never really reaching a jaw-dropping zenith worthy of predecessors like Leonard Cohen and Burt Bacharach. Still, you have to admire his embrace of blithe '60s asceticism, even if his tendencies towards genteel Nick Drake-isms occasionally sink otherwise-buoyant pop gems like "Track You Down".

It's not a perfect outing by any stretch of the imagination, but if you're able to look beyond Two Way Monologue's growing pains you'll find an artist who's maturing and evolving in ways foreign even to himself. If you listen long enough, you'll realize that Lerche hasn't even hit his stride yet -- and when he does, he's going to be unstoppable.