"There's a tendency in our time, subscribing to the idea that anything 'authentic' or 'honest' is automatically good," says Sondre Lerche. "I find that depressing. You have to actually create something. There has to be a process. I try to avoid just singing my diary over a couple of chords." Fighting words? Not quite. Lerche, an award-winning singer-songwriter, newly minted Hollywood go-to man and frequent sighting on critics' year-end "best albums" lists, simply believes there's a lot of work that goes into crafting a song. Heartbeat Radio, his fifth studio album and first for Rounder Records, is proof that good art needs time, thought and careful construction. It is a "generous" album (his words), and a summation of everything Lerche has learned over the last decade of making music. "The records I make seem to be a reaction to the record I did before," says the Brooklyn musician, who was born and raised in Norway and returned there to record Heartbeat. "My last few records were recorded with my backing band, Faces Down, almost live off the floor. And those were a reaction to my first records, which were more studio affairs. On this album, I wanted both: I wanted the physical force and excitement from the live setting and the patience and the endless possibilities of the studio setting." Heartbeat Radio is certainly Lerche's boldest and most challenging record. While it maintains the studio polish of his groundbreaking debut, Faces Down, there's also a sense of musical adventure that stems from his later work. The songs mix acoustic guitars with grand gestures of orchestral pop, with elements of anything from 50s Jazz, via 60s and 70s Brazillian psych-folk to state-of-the-art 80s pop masters such as Prefab Sprout, Scritti Politti and Fleetwood Mac. Lyrically, the album finds Lerche in a variety of moods