Lisa Bassenge is back, and she has brought flowers with her. With “Wildflowers,” she completes her trio trilogy, once again with Jacob Karlzon on piano and Andreas Lang on bass—as on “Borrowed and Blue” (2018) and “Mothers” (2020).

This time there are eleven songs, seemingly eclectic yet cohesive. The spectrum on Wildflowers ranges from Dolly Parton to Depeche Mode, from Bob Dylan to Death Cab for Cutie. Added to this is Lisa Bassenge's profoundly melancholic original composition Morning Sounds Of Spring. It's a colorful bouquet, but the way the three arrange and perform it, the individual pieces don't seem thrown together, but rather like chapters in a story. Each one shimmers on its own, but the whole is more than the sum of its parts.

The same applies to the trio itself. The two musicians—Jacob Karlzon from Sweden and Andreas Lang from Denmark—embed Lisa Bassenge's unmistakable voice in a warm, “Scandinavian” sound in the best sense of the word: relaxed but always engaging; very playful but never intrusive. “This sound found us,” says Lisa Bassenge. And on “Wildflowers,” the three have brought it to perfection. Every beat of the album testifies to the incredible chemistry between the singer and the musicians.

What also connects the songs is the quality of the lyrics. They are poetic texts of existential depth, and in Lisa Bassenge's haunting interpretation and crystal-clear phrasing, they become intoxicating mental cinema.

Is it jazz, pop, or chanson? With “Wildflowers,” the Lisa Bassenge Trio once again confidently demonstrates how fluid the boundaries between seemingly very different genres are. This music doesn't need to be pigeonholed. It's all about the beauty and truth of the songs. (Press release)