Wasser reads the MIRANDA rights to her 2006 release, coming up with an alibi that surpasses the original. Joan As Police Woman release Real Life Evolution.
TIME TO REPRISE & REAPPRAISE
Hasn’t this been done before, when an established artist re-releases an earlier work, revised and revamped to take note and stock of the intervening years spent, developing and refining their muse? It rarely works, one exception maybe being Natalie Merchant’s Paradise Is There, her 20 year reappraisal of 1995’s Tigerlily. This album, similarly re-recorded after 20 years, might just be another. Let’s be fair, it is, actually.
EQUILIBRIUM
Joan Wasser is quite the chameleon, embracing any number of styles, since she first emerged from her garret, as an avant garde violinist, adding her flourishes to the likes of the then Anthony, of the Johnsons, fame. By the time she started her own solo career, she was, she said, channeling the songs of Al Green, with the Guardian saying: “Pensive and gentle; sometimes stately of tempo, sometimes slightly breathless, but always erring on the side of lovely understatement.” Since then she has tackled darker and glitchier electronic material, a brace of covers album, Motown-lite pop fusion, hard Afro-fusion, with the late Tony Allen, ahead a return to soulful ballads, this time invoking Curtis Mayfield and Marvin Gaye.
The purpose of this release is to allow the songs the life they have built up for themselves, over the years. “Songs live beyond their creator”, says Wasser. “Like us, they settle into themselves over time, finding their own equilibrium. That spirit is the pulse of this new album“.
TRANSCENDANT SOUL
Running in a different order, it is with the transcendent soul of Anyone that it opens. A pleasing song, first time around, here it is transformed. One of Wasser’s incrementing skills is that as a studio jockey, being a fine producer, able to coax nuances both unexpected and yet elemental. This is one such example. So what is different? The slightly spiky challenge of 2006 becomes a lush statement of terms having been met. Acceptance, even. The stand up bass is wonderful.
In a similar way, Flushed Chest appears expanded, the, in retrospect, slightly trebly compression now all drawn out into a brighter and deeper clarity. The bvs coo and the mood is pure Philly, vintage Hall and Oates. She’s back, if you will. The Ride ripples in delectably, on the delicately picked guitar of Will Graefe, and, if it echoes Carole King, a listen to the original reminds that it was there then, if a little ahead of any textile arts becoming fully realised. They are, here.
BLIMEY, THIS IS GOOD
It becomes vexatious to compare each an every track, not least as it threatens to diminish what was an already good record; this is just richer. I Defy, which features the vocal of Krystle Warren, perpetuates the Philadelphia driven freedom to dream, and this album is fast to becoming the soul album of this year. It’s certainly mine. Feed The Light has a lustrous shimmer, as Wasser moans the words. The rhythm section of Danny Blume and Parker Kindred, maintain the attention to detail, a constancy that suggests a telepathy between the players. The strings, of course played by Wasser, are a restrained and uncluttered joy. And then Christabel, with an almost baroquialism, as the piano drives an insistent countermelody, over which she croons. Blimey, this is good!
Save Me then throws in some curveballs of deep rhythmic choppiness. If not quite powerchords, they cast the same shadow, if with a greater sense of the operatic. Which is perfect, as, rather than Wasser’s voice, it is the gravelly groan of Iggy Pop. I had forgotten Mr Osterberg was guesting on the album, it thus somewhat of an ultimately pleasing shock, with Wasser acting as a Greek chorus to this anything but a stooge. Unlike much else here, this is all off-broadway experimental. That sense lingers into the electronic bubblings of We Don’t Own It, which channels Marvin Gaye via Terence Trent D’Arby. Each of these two tracks necessitate a quick contrast and compare to two decades ago, with loads of contrast, and very little compare.
MORE REFLECTIVE
Eternal Flame isn’t, clearly, the Bangular one, this song of the same name being a highlight of the original. In a, so far, solitary, lapse of judgement, all the tendaberry gospel of 2006 is excised, leaving behind some sophisticated balladry that, minus the pizazz, is a little bland. Real Life, then, the title track which opened the original, here closes the proceedings. No longer the sound of a slightly gauche debutant, this glossier and more reflective iteration is a stylistically appropriate end piece, but, like the track before, is just too smooth, as it veers into lullaby territory. Don’t get me wrong, neither these two are bad, they just aren’t as good, with the gap between not as good and the great elsewhere being rather too pronounced.
SOMEWHERE MAGICAL
Overall this is a tremendous record. 8 of the 10 tracks take the originals and take them somewhere magical. And, whilst knowledge of the original may not be mandatory, the jurisprudence of rediscovery prompts what a gem it actually was, way back then. Reveal records would be all within rights to release in a two-fer, each together and alongside. I commend their support in allowing Wasser to expand her vision in this way, mindful that, were it not for this UK based label, might we ever have heard of Joan As Police Woman anyway, the Derby based independent the first to offer her a contract.
Joan As Police Woman: Website