Joan as Policewoman at the Union Chapel 04/10/09
Joan as Britney, Jimi, Iggy and just about Policewoman
Oct 12, 2009
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There can’t be many better venues to worship through music than London’s Union Chapel, where listeners came ready to bow down with her. But when she took to the dimly lit stage it was clear that another side of Joan had turned up to play.
Since emerging as an artist in her own right with ‘Real Life’, the former violinist has stepped boldly into the limelight with open, honest songwriting and a shimmering, soulful voice. Fans of Joan Wasser have all fallen in love with the beautiful, haunting sounds of her own brand of ‘American Soul’.
Tonight though the band was gone and with it, that smooth, jazzy quality. Accompanied only by Timo Ellis and a four-track cassette recorder, the result was a stripped down and altogether simpler sound, the likes of which we have heard on Top of the Pops a thousand times.
It was a sound that undermined her music, and confounded the expectations of the fans congregated faithfully in the chapel pews. What could have been an achingly beautiful concert in the hushed and moody aura of one of London’s great music venues was somewhat compromised by this strange musical choice.
Joan covers rock legends and Britney Spears
The opener was a very light and forgettable cover of Britney Spears’s ‘Overprotected’, which may make Wasser cry every time she hears it, but it immediately broke the hypnotic trance in which the audience sat waiting for her performance.
That said, it only got better from here, but in a way no-one expected. Tonight predominantly saw Joan with a guitar slung from her shoulders, playing more rock than soul. She covered Hendrix, Iggy Pop, Public Enemy and Sonic Youth, only occasionally sitting behind the piano to cry out one of her own moving hymns.
It was a different side to the woman who has built her reputation on an altogether more mellow sentiment, and it could have lost the audience were Joan herself not so absorbing onstage. She was charismatic and exuberant, humouring the audience in between tracks, swaying playfully to the rhythm of her own song. There was a tangible juxtaposition between the sexy songstress with the guitar and the vulnerable women behind the keyboard.
At one moment she was meowing a brilliant, brooding cover of Jimi Hendrix’s ‘Fire’, reminiscent of Portishead; at the next she was back to her poignant, heart-wrenching best as she let go on ‘The Ride’ and ‘Start of My Heart’.
New music unveilved
Some excellent new material surfaced too. ‘The Human Condition’ was very Joan: pining, open and sad. But ‘Flash’ and ‘Nervous’ are in a seemingly new vein: sexier, more teasing. By the time the pair had played their rendition of ‘Keeper of the Flame’, in which Timo Ellis picked out a mesmerising solo, the audience where hypnotised again.
This was hardly Joan as Police Woman at their touching best. It was a performance that didn’t hit the soaring heights of ‘Real Life’, though it had its moments. At their best, they need a band, a fuller sound and a touch more of the original material that so defines them. But somehow, watching Joan on stage is addictive; she is infectious, someone who seems to have lived an extremely felt life. Watching her enjoy herself you cannot help but enjoy yourself too.
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