If Joan As Police Woman has built a career as a musical outsider, she remains the ultimate artist for those who have cottoned on. She is to all intents and purposes, the musical equivalent of an inside job. Not a full time heist by any means.

EPISODE 68: Joan As Police Woman enters into The American Songbook. not a full time heist

It’s been party season. We had a few parties this year and as usual, I laboured over the playlists, perfecting them as far as possible. My objective is to surprise and delight with a bunch of songs people barely recognise but instantly like. Putting the effort in means avoiding obvious choices but at the same time building a suitably jovial vibe. There are always some central pillars - songs that work. One of those is the Joan As Police Woman song Holy City. The song is always an instant hit at parties. Guaranteed to elicit excitable inquiries as to “who is this?”. That instant reaction I’m looking for. The song is a #1 hit in my family - a favourite of my eldest daughter as she was growing up and just one of those family life tracks. 

Of course, the tune wasn’t an actual hit, on any official music charts. But Joan doesn’t care and nor should we. It’s a banger anyhow. Holy City was the platform I jumped off of into Joan Wasser’s musical world. This was in 2014, with the album The Classic. By then she had already released four previous studio albums (one of which was the first of her two successful cover versions albums (Covers and Covers Two). But she was also effectively into the second chapter of her music career, having spent most of the 90s in the indie rock outfit The Dambuilders and subsequently an accomplished collaborator and session musician. 

But if Holy City is instantly likeable, with an urgent beat and a strong poppy hook, it’s somewhat uncharacteristic of Joan’s music, which is mostly the opposite: seductive slow burns that take their time to become loved. It’s what Joan herself refers to as the “eternal quandary” of a life making alternative songs that are an acquired taste in today’s ear candy driven music business. 

“A lot of people are just really busy and they don’t have time to figure out what this incredible new music is that might require 10 listens until you’re hooked”. 

Then again, after some time away from Joan’s music, it was another of her singles that I was immediately drawn to, the smouldering, unhurried jazzy ballad Full Time Heist, from her new album Lemons, Limes and Orchids. This song, written as a cynical ode to one of life’s chancers, is my song of 2024 and enters into the canon of my all time favourite songs. 

Joan is the ultimate collaborator - entirely comfortable with creating in the moment no matter who she works with - and some of her collaborators have been bona fide music royalty, including Anohni, Tony Allen, Rufus Wainwright and Damon Albarn (and David Sylvian although their recording sessions have yet to see the light of day - something I only discovered after my chat with Joan). 

Effective collaborator as she is, Joan makes her records very much to her own musical signature, something that has been a manifesto from the beginning of her solo years. Right from the start her 2007 debut Real Life was entirely self-funded, subsequently shopped around to labels that would be willing to take it to market. She had a little bit of help for her first E.P. from - of all places an independent record shop in Derby, England. Indeed, store owner Tom Rose of Reveal Records created his own label just to get her first songs on the market. Tom happens to be Joan’s manager to this day. Some kudos too, to the once independent but now major-label owned PIAS for distributing many of Joan’s albums in Europe. After all, artists as original as Joan Wasser cannot be expected to simply build it and hope listeners will come. 

Going back through the catalogue, it is striking just how high the quality of Joan’s solo output is, most notably her stunning sophomore record To Survive (2008), the ultra-cool collaboration with Tony Allen and Dave Okumu The Solution Is Restless (released during the pandemic in 2021). And now Lemons, Limes and Orchids - yet another high water mark for an artist whose songs have a classic, timeless quality, if you give them the time they deserve. 

The obvious question is how does such an uncompromising, singular artist even survive in today’s content-flooded music business?

“I practice daily to avoid the whole ‘compare and despair’. Keep the focus on myself and make the best music I possibly can and then I’m a happy person”. 

Joan is in the camp of American musicians who are more popular in Europe than they are at home (a tradition that goes back to Hendrix and Cher among many others). It’s so pleasing then, that at last, this is being partly corrected by way of an invitation for her to play at New York’s Lincoln Centre in March 2025 as part of the American Songbook “Outsiders” series*. An outsider she may be, but for those who dive deep into her musical world, Joan As Police Woman is the ultimate artist for those who have cottoned on. She is to all intents and purposes, the musical equivalent of an inside job. 

Lemons, Limes and Orchids can be purchased at Bandcamp.

*Joan plays March 22nd 2025 at the Appel Room, Lincoln Centre and the very next night, Meshell Ndegeocello plays that same venue - what a couple of days in New York that will be.