On this second outing for Norwegian pianist Liv Andrea Hauge‘s trio, their time spent touring and playing together over the last year has reaped rewards in the adventurous expression they have discovered on the eight pieces collected here.
Although a year in the making, only three days were spent in the studio recording Ville Blomster. That spontaneity, as well as Liv’s manner of writing in her apartment with the windows open, allowing life to suffuse the compositions, comes through in the end result.
Eight very different pieces appear with subtle yet essential input from drummer August Glännestrand and bassist Georgia Wartel Collins very much turning this album from one person’s ideas into a natural conversation between equal partners. Ville Blomster translates as Wild Flowers and there is a love of nature as well as a willingness to tread the less-travelled path that informs Liv’s song structures; but there is also something romantic in the tone of the piano and some of the melodies that warms the heart.
It is an easy, dreamy sound to start with but the drums are a rambling stutter, posing awkwardly beside the elegant piano. This dichotomy is part of the appeal and as the piece turns a corner, so the desultory bass wanders in. The piano dazzles as it travels, pushing at the drums, edging things into a waltzy atmosphere and in other places dancing more loosely with the bass, always reacting to the rhythm section, making decisions on the fly and drawing the listener closer. At other points, the bass loses all structure, an abstract series of subterranean detonations that threaten the equanimity of the melancholy piano while sparse, seashore percussion ebbs and flows. Where the inherent melancholy of the piano emerges, the trio does its best to shake things out, to override it with a lively kitten style that leaps about over the keys as the rhythm section throws balls of wool and catnip around the room. It leaps at its own shadow, part unfettered joy, part natural reaction, with a low boredom threshold that draws the original motif around itself for a moment before bursting back out.There is a warmth and familiarity to the piano tone, but there is also a desire to duck down back alleys and hijack the proceedings, hiding in doorways and raucously roughhousing on the cobbled streets. Scuffles in the undergrowth grow, setting up the piano as they throw things at the drums. It feels like the soundtrack to a snow day with a deep, resonant bass piano run overseeing the others skipping and shuffling, throwing off the scarves and gloves and suddenly becoming hot and heady, desperate for release.
Although there are passages of romantic tonality, the piano appears to have a mind of its own and a short attention span. A rhythm might be a curious, wayward sea voyage, rolling and roiling; yet you ca almost hear Liv’s mind at work, deciding what is required, in which direction it needs to veer. It might be a meditative romantic passage to which the rhythm section is drawn like fascinated onlookers, but such prettiness will be discarded and replaced by the sounds of the bass wiping windows while the piano confounds with its easy flurries.It is a mystery tour of the highest order that touches the heart yet won’t allow that sentiment to last for long, instead looking for other ways to engage the listener and engage they do to a really enjoyable degree. For a sophomore release, it is a work of real maturity yet full of pure joy and is irresistible like the catnip to the naughty kitten.
-Mr Olivetti-
