Joan As Police Woman has been an underrated New York cult act for more than a decade. Subtle to the point of radar-evasion, Joan Wasser and her evolving lineups regularly put out rich, poised, softly lit soul records to critical acclaim. Somehow, those same records fail to grab the ring outside a circle of cognoscenti wise to the velvety sustenance offered by this low-key multi-instrumentalist.
That’s over now. At the start of a UK tour promoting Damned Devotion, her outstanding latest album – one that will take in JAPW’s biggest date ever at London’s Royal Festival Hall on 22 April – this lineup is at peak groove: Wasser, glam in a peasant blouse and red leather trousers, on keyboards, guitar and witty asides. Four men are arranged around her on two more sets of keyboards, bass and drums. It’s a crime that this magnificent, galleried ex-fruit market is a seated venue, because Damned Devotion, released here in February, is a record that demands to be swayed to. It’s not a huge rupture from its five solo antecedents, but tweaks Wasser’s previous offering: new, punchy programmed beats (sexists, please note: all Wasser’s), more glitterball dazzle on tracks such as Steed (for Jean Genet), and greater electronic clout throughout. It’s a quantum leap in focus that nails Wasser’s classy talents to a high mast.
Glasgow gets three of Damned Devotion’s finest cuts at the start. There’s Wonderful, the silky-smooth invitational opener, a swatch of velveteen discussing the desire to regain one’s peace of mind. Even better, the warm and rueful Warning Bell wishes for a klaxon blare when a relationship heads south. Instead, “all I hear is music, soft and low”, croons Wasser, self-deprecatingly.
She slings on her guitar for Tell Me, an even catchier plea for communication. All the keyboards vamp hard, and Jared Samuel’s Moog synth provides oscillations, all topped off by a Farfisa-like organ solo. The male band members make like the Bee Gees on falsetto backing vocals. Near the end, there’s a virtually unrecognisable abstract cover of Kiss by Prince.
This is a new and excellent Police Woman. Named after a 70s US cop show, regarded as feminist at the time – a tough but glamorous Angie Dickinson played the lead – Wasser’s alias is an alter ego, like Beyoncé’s Sasha Fierce, but more tongue-in-cheek. In Police Woman, Wasser has long been slinkier and braver than her civilian self might been in the face of death and disappointment; she gets to sing her super low-key soul music, looking Joan Jett-tough on the outside to distract from the molten stuff within. Wasser’s music has often been packed with sensuality and knowingness – hence the red leather trousers – as well as wisdom and sly humour and, most of all, deep sadness borne stoically, to insufficient fanfare. All most people hear is “music, soft and low”.
Still, Wasser persevered. Records called things such as To Survive (2008) have marked her tussles with a frankly unsporting level of loss and romantic bedevilment. To Survive was a response to the death of her mother. Wasser’s debut solo album, Real Life (2006), came about because New York musical buddies such as Anohni (then Antony Hegarty) pestered her to be a frontwoman. Previously, Wasser was a classically trained punk violinist for hire, and an eventual Johnson in Antony and the Johnsons. Her CV of previous and extracurricular work is deep and wide, including stints with Rufus Wainwright, Beck, John Cale, Damon Albarn and RZA of the Wu-Tang Clan. The old and sultry Honor Wishes survives in this setlist – a midnight jazz track barely above the volume of pillow talk.
One of Wasser’s little-known previous projects was Black Beetle, formed with the remnants of Jeff Buckley’s band after he drowned in 1997. Wasser and Buckley were in a long-term relationship; drummer Parker Kindred is still with her. Later, Lou Reed became one of her major supporters, and in the space between recording her last solo JAPW record – The Classic (2014) – and this one, Wasser has said her farewells to Reed, as well as the father who raised her (Wasser was adopted). There’s a new song about the latter tonight – What Was It Like – and the radical mellowness he taught by example. His words form the chorus: “I could never see what passing judgment on anybody else would ever do for me.” It’s not exactly the catchy millennial stuff that bludgeons the Top 40. But as Wasser hints in her introduction, it lands some very now truth better than a lot of epigrammatic T-shirts.
Until now, being underappreciated was Wasser’s default. Damned Devotion, though, ends this. It is just as intimate as her best work, but much more stylish, spacious and saturated by turns; way better than Let It Be You, 2016’s lopsided collaboration with Benjamin Lazar Davis, and much more contemporary than The Classic.
Much ink has been spilled over the fact that pop is an increasingly unforgiving business, where artists have to turn a profit immediately and are no longer afforded the chance to mature. Even indie labels, which often act as incubators, are not immune. The US singer-songwriter Torres angrily tweeted the end of her deal with 4AD, her UK label, last week when her last record, Three Futures, failed to perform commercially.
Wasser is proof that veteran musicians can finesse and surprise; that talents don’t just bud, bloom and wither in a pointy music biz parabola or burn out and fade away like a haggard rock myth. They can persevere; they can survive.
