I don’t know how I found her.
In 2008, either because I had
read something or someone
had recommended her to me,
I bought a CD. I don’t think I
had a clue at the time about
her collaborations with other
famous artists or that she was
Jeff Buckley’s fiancee up to the
point of his tragic drowning.
So beyond all associations, it
must have just been an interest
in her music that influenced me.
I loved my initial introduction,
the album To Survive, but for
some reason it was a decade
until I bought another one
of her albums on CD, and then
another three years after that
before I bought my first Joan
As Police Woman album on
vinyl. Here’s a mystery. I love
her so much, I don’t know why
I don’t have all of her albums.
As far as I have learned, Joan Wasser
was a classically trained violinist
until she finally gave that all up
for rock and roll. She is a skilled
multi-instrumentalist who had a
number of sideman jobs with famous
people until she started writing her
own songs and after Jeff Buckley’s death
she began recording under the moniker
Joan As Police Woman. She’s a smart
lyricist, an accomplished songwriter
and producer, and she has a voice
among the most unique, singular
voices in all of contemporary pop.
I think of female voices that stand
out for a point of comparison:
Carly Simon, maybe, comes closest.
It’s not an instantly beautiful sound.
There is something unnervingly strange
about it, and yet it is unquestionably
good, expressive, and despite the oddity,
comforting and intimate. Musically,
the two albums I have on vinyl here
demonstrate her range more
effectively, perhaps, than any other
two records of hers together. The
first, a collaboration with Nigerian
drummer Tony Allen and Austrian
guitarist Dave Okumu, is a kind of
trippy jazz improvisational groove fest
over the top of which Joan is singing
in her characteristic and wonderful
way, her keyboard and piano work
adding the cool icing on the cake.
It’s a wild record, with tunes clocking
in at near twelve and nine minutes,
consisting of what feels like improvised
but precisely interlocking grooves,
while this magnificent drummer, in
his 80’s at the time of the recording,
plays anything but the two and
the four. It is a veritable rhythm
section masterclass. And somehow
Joan’s singing makes these jams
feel like bonafide songs, with verses
and choruses, hooks, the whole nine
yards. Whereas, Lemons, Limes and
Orchids is a more “traditional” album
of pop songs, exquisitely beautiful,
mostly chill, quiet, minimalist but also
groovy as hell. Wickedly good. Listening
to her today makes me want more
of what she’s having. Of my generation
of women songwriters, over Amos, over
Apple, Mann, Cole, Colvin, over any of the
matriarchs of grunge, Joan Wasser as Joan As
Police Woman is my absolute favorite.
Notes on the vinyl editions:
- Joan As Police Woman, Tony Allen, and Dave Okumu, The Solution Is Restless, [PIAS] Records, 2021, black double vinyl.
- Lemons, Limes and Orchids, [PIAS] Records, 2024, translucent pink vinyl.
In case you don’t already know: I’m listening to almost everything in my vinyl collection, A to Z, and writing at least one, sometimes two or three long skinny poem-like-things in response for each artist, and on a few occasions, writing a long skinny poem-like-thing in response to more than one artist. As a poet and a student of poetry, I understand that these things look like poems, but they don’t really sound much like poetry, hence, I call them “poem-like-things.” I’ll admit that they’re just long, skinny essays that veer every now and then into the poetic or lyric.
michael jarmer 