Lis Wessberg featuring Veronika Rud,  In the Wake of Blue Review

Lis Wessberg’s In the Wake of Blue Moves in Slow Currents

by Ferell Aubre

In the Wake of Blue never really settles into stillness. Even the quietest tracks keep some kind of motion underneath them with straight-eighth bass movement, brushes dragging across the snare, keyboard arpeggios rippling behind the melody. The grooves stay low to the ground. Nobody pushes very hard.

In the Wake of Blue treats spaciousness as the thematic idea. The music moves through straight-eighth bass motion, snare-centered backbeats, cymbal pulse, and half-time grounding that keeps the album in constant motion without raising its emotional temperature. The payoff arrives as moments of release from the quieter writing. As the frontline, trombonist Lis Wessberg and vocalist Veronika Rud are embedded in the way they interact with the ensemble.

“Longing” grows as electronic tones and effected trombone drift into a medium-up groove carried by the kick drum and the accent of the snare and the bass line pushing steadily underneath it. Rud sings calmly across the top of the pulse, sustaining notes in the upper register while the rhythm section keeps the motion. Wessberg answers those vocal contours directly in her solo, carrying over Rud’s sliding entrances and held-note phrasing into warm trombone lines that climb gradually through the register. Drummer Jeppe Gram keeps reshaping the groove from inside the kit. Reinforcing the backbeat, adding cowbell color, then loosening the feel again before the track settles into sustained keyboard harmony.

The title track lets the rhythmic design speak. Gram places most of the motion in the cymbals while the snare marks a soft backbeat underneath it, creating a pocket with just enough drive. Rud leans slightly behind the beat, stretching consonants and vowels across the groove without losing contact with it. Wordless backing vocals lock into short rhythmic figures with the band. Steen Rasmussen’s piano solo grows slowly out of that pulse. He leaves long gaps between phrases while the harmony widens underneath him, a line at a time.

“Flux” becomes the clearest statement of the album’s rhythmic architecture. A hi-hat figure threads through the track from beginning to end while Lennart Ginman’s bass stays planted in half-time, landing heavily on one and three even as it grows more active between them. Motion shifts across the ensemble. The drums pull back to brushes. Keyboard pads continue moving underneath the harmony. Piano fills answer the trombone lines. Wessberg avoids crowding the bar with notes, shaping the solo through held tones, glissandos, and slow crescendos into the upper register. Even when the groove leans toward bossa and opens briefly into a montuno-like passage, the texture thickens, but the energy barely ripples.

On “Vapor,” stereo-panned bass tones and suspended keyboard harmony leave large spaces around the melody while Gram quietly redraws the pulse beneath it with brush drag, snare rolls, and light cymbal color. The drums become more active across the middle section, but the tune never breaks its low-lit mood. “The Endless Thread” works similarly. Brushes trace a straight-eighth pattern across the snare while the bass remains mostly in half-time. The String quartet swells upward around the vocals and trombone, then dissolves back into held harmony instead of resolving sharply.

Rasmussen’s role in the ensemble is especially important because he rarely lets the harmonic space sit still. Piano voicings answer the melody lines directly while keyboard pads and arpeggios continue moving underneath them. On “When Birds Flock,” rippling keyboard figures create a second layer of motion behind the vocals and trombone. The groove stays active even when the drums pull back dynamically. That redistribution of motion becomes one of the album’s defining habits: if one part relaxes, another quietly takes over the movement.

Wessberg’s solos lean on breathy attacks, held tones, and slow dynamic expansion into the upper register. Just as often, she lets the line thin back out before resolving it. Rud approaches the material similarly. Her lyric phrasing stays rounded and unhurried, but her scat passages introduce forward articulation and more rhythmic activity without changing the overall feel of the ensemble.

“The Quiet Edge” and “Shadows in Bloom” bring several of the album’s strongest ideas together. Gram maintains soft brush motion underneath half-time bass grounding while the keyboards continue tracing rhythmic figures above the groove. The harmonic movement remains relaxed, more concerned with color and contour than dramatic resolution. Even the endings avoid hard cadences. Phrases fade into sustained chords, cymbal wash, and suspended harmony.

In the Wake of Blue never forces a choice between pulse and openness. Wessberg and her ensemble keep redistributing motion through brushes, keyboard arpeggios, half-time bass movement, and sustained melodic phrasing. The music continues subtle evolution even at its softest dynamic levels. The result is a contemporary jazz record that stays warm, spacious, and quietly kinetic from beginning to end.