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

by Stamish Malcuss

Across In the Wake of Blue, Veronika Rud’s warm engaging phrasing and Lis Wessberg’s breath-shaped trombone contours the mellow environment.  The trombone and voice keep circling one another through glissandos, held-note swells, and soft dynamic releases. The album is built around this hierarchy of shared melodic pacing. Wessberg and Rud move through the music together, often shaping phrases with such similar timing and contour that the distinction between singer and instrumentalist starts to blur.

On “The Promise,” Rud opens with a wordless melody in her upper register before the lyric enters. The lyrics are positive and storied.  Wessberg’s trombone arrives, it feels like a continuation of Rud’s phrasing. The tone is warm and airy, but there’s real focus in the way the notes expand and taper. Later, trombone fills emerge between vocal phrases, though “fills” almost understates their role. They extend the emotional shape of the vocal line instead of interrupting it.

The title track moves into a more rhythmic-oriented setting without abandoning the album’s suspended emotional pacing. “In the Wake of Blue” rides a relaxed straight-eighth pulse with subtle clave influence underneath it.  Rud’s sings with well shaped phrases, that move in a way that keeps the style grounded. Wessberg answers with rounded trombone attacks and held tones that bloom slowly before receding again. At several points the wordless backing vocals merge with the brass lines, creating layered breath and brass moving through the same harmonic space.

What’s striking is how calmly the ensemble handles the intimate feel. The rhythm section becomes active at times, but never disruptive. Jeppe Gram’s drumming relies heavily on brushes, cymbal color,  backbeat motion, and snare texture rather than overt rhythmic force. Lennart Ginman’s bass frequently settles into half-time grounding beneath the surface activity, which keeps the music breathing horizontally instead of driving aggressively forward.

Even on tracks where the grooves gain momentum, like in “Longing,” “Flux,” and parts of “Shadows in Bloom,” the music never shifts identity. The rhythmic motion exists to support interaction.

On “Longing,” Rud’s phrasing is playful while Wessberg delivers her solo with a lyrical focus on glissandos that mirrors the vocal contour heard earlier. It’s a small detail, but an important one. Again and again, the trombone behaves like another singing voice rather than a separate improvisational authority.

“There’s a moment in “When Birds Flock” where the distinction between Rud’s voice and Wessberg’s trombone is evident. The two move in parallel lines, separate briefly, then reconnect through wordless harmonies, sustained tones, and soft tutti phrasing. Rud’s scat passages become articulated and rhythmically active. Her underlying phrasing language remains closely tied to Wessberg’s playing with gliding entrances, held upper-register tones, and emotive releases.

Rasmussen’s piano and keyboards keep the entire environment framed with harmonic clarity. Sometimes the piano fills spaces left open by the voice and trombone with stepwise or chromatic movement. Elsewhere the keyboards create padded harmonic layers or rippling arpeggiated textures underneath the melodic exchange. The strings function as orchestral colors that often operate as atmosphere and emotional framing, reinforcing swells, counterlines, and slow-moving harmonic color.

You keep expecting the album to open wider than it does. It never really wants to. Instead, In the Wake of Blue keeps returning to softness and gentle development. On “Flux” and “The Quiet Edge,” Wessberg shapes phrases through ascending glissandos, held notes, and dynamic tapering. Notes rise gradually out of near-whispered attacks, expand toward moderate intensity, then fold quietly back into the ensemble texture. The effect is deeply expressive without becoming demonstrative.

“The Endless Thread” has the strings and keyboards swelling around Rud’s intervallic vocal movement as Wessberg enters with breathier trombone phrasing. They slowly develop into fuller resonance, but not to much. Even the cadences resist hard resolution. Tracks fade, dissolve, or settle into sustained harmony instead of arriving at sharply articulated endings. The album seems interested in continuity. And honestly, that’s what gives the record its identity.

In the Wake of Blue sustains emotional momentum through melodic interdependence. Voice, trombone, strings, piano, and rhythm section repeatedly dissolve into one another through layered textures, half-time grounding, soft cadences, and dynamically shaped phrasing. Wessberg and Rud are a unified in character foreground. They share it, patiently, until the album’s sequence of performances move like a single extended emotional atmosphere unfolding in a calming motion.