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June 9, 2008 10:17 am
According to Joan as Police Woman’s Joan Wasser, pretty is the new black. And sincerity is the new irony. And accessible is the new indie. Wasser’s not being glib; far from it. Though she launched her career contributing vocals and violin to such abrasive bands as Those Bastard Souls and the Dambuilders, Wasser has mostly made a habit of turning up wherever the loveliest music around is being made—lending a hand to Rufus Wainwright, say, or joining Antony’s Johnsons crew, or starring as the subject of then-boyfriend Jeff Buckley’s ode, “Everybody Here Wants You.” Or, more recently, debuting her own album of sui generis, torch-inflected, subversively beautiful tunes. Real Life was released last year to reviews that would make a lesser woman get a little big in the head, but Wasser’s been a supporting player in the music scene for long enough to know better. (Humility is the new rock-star attitude.) “I’ve worked for a few genuine stars, and mostly those people are great,” she says. “But of course, the moments that leave the deepest impression are the ones where I was like, I would never treat anyone that way. So I try not to.” The new Joan as Police Woman LP To Survive lands on record store shelves today; here, Brooklyn-based Wasser tells Style.com why soul is the new punk.
There are so many influences operating in your music, it’s hard to find a language to capture it. How do you describe your sound?
I’ve always found it pretty much impossible to describe my music; I’m too close, you know? But there was this one review in The Observer, in London, and I like it so much I’m thinking about adopting it as my shorthand. He said I sounded like—wait, you know what, I’m going to find it and read it to you.
So you do, in fact, read your reviews.
Oh, yeah. I mean, Real Life, that was a record where I felt like I was testing myself as I wrote, entertaining different aspects of my taste and my songwriting sensibility, but the response I got to that record let me relax a little more into my own thing. Does that make sense? It’s like, I could let the songs take me where they wanted to go, because I wasn’t constantly worrying, is anyone going to get this? OK, I found the quote. Ready?
Shoot.
According to The Observer, Joan as Police Woman “is what Chopin would sound like now if he was a modern-day multi-instrumentalist with a passion for Al Green and a voice like Roberta Flack.” I was like, cool, I’ll take that. Is it weird I just read that to you?
Not at all. Do you listen to a lot of soul music? It seems like the one sound that’s not on your very long résumé.
It’s my favorite. My favorite-favorite. That music comes from such a deep, honest place. I mean, now and then I like to listen to some lighter stuff, too, but mostly I want to listen to, like, Donny Hathaway. That shit is just undeniable. And I learn from that, I do. When I first started writing songs, I’d use all this poetic imagery, metaphors and things, and it’s been a process of stripping that away and just getting down to the feeling. You listen to a great soul track, and you realize—when you’re in the feeling, there’s no time for metaphors, there’s no time for, ‘oh, the sky is blue.’ It’s ‘baby, baby, don’t leave me.’ Because if baby does leave, that sky won’t be there tomorrow. It doesn’t matter.
You started your solo career relatively late. Was it something you were always planning?
No? You know, for a long time, I just didn’t have anything to say. Or, maybe the better way of explaining why it took me so long to start writing my own songs is to say, I got to speak through my violin, and that was enough. And once I began to think, maybe it’s time to start speaking with words, it took me a while to figure out how to frame those words within songs. But I’ve been lucky to work with so many amazing artists, including the musicians who play with me now, because all of those experiences filtered through me and made me ready when the time came to do my own thing. Now it’s like, the music is what comes out of me when I’m searching for a sense of peace.
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