Lerche breezes through new and old

No matter that his latest album isn’t even officially out until next week. In a strategy that suggested he knew the dedication of his audience, Lerche performed all but one of the new disc’s tracks, including reeling off three newbies in a row to start the 90-minute set. “Ricochet,’’ a Tin Pan Alley-style lullaby of mood and melody, opened the show softly, with a gentle undertow.

A frothy “Private Caller’’ found Lerche trading his acoustic guitar for an electric and bouncing cheerfully through the song’s story line of surprised love. A pair of other new numbers — the ascetic “Tied up to The Tide,’’ and “Coliseum Town,’’ with its string-filled sense of bemusement (and “Blackbird’’ melody line) — owed heavily to both John’s and Paul’s sides of the “White Album’’-era Beatles, respectively.

“To divert my mind, I try to make another love song rhyme,’’ Lerche mused with conversational charm on the latter. “But it’s harder than it seems, to describe what I just dreamed.’’ Those words rang true. With his ability to navigate an array of styles, from meticulously arranged Brill Building-style pop to jazz- and folk-tinged gestures, Lerche is light years ahead of calculatedly “sincere’’ singer-songwriters such as James Blunt and Damien Rice.

The only quibble Thursday was that Lerche made everything sound so easy that occasionally his material came across as an exercise in precision over passion; a bit bloodless and impeccably appointed, with too few edges.

Nightlands, a side project launched by Dave Hartley of War on Drugs, evoked memories of Laurel Canyon’s late ’60s-early ’70s music scene, with choral harmonies nearly as high, wide, and warm.

Jonathan Perry can be reached at roughgems@comcast.net.