Joan As Police Woman

The studied violinist Joan Wasser, who today mostly plays keyboard instruments and calls herself Joan as Police Woman after the leading actress of a 70s TV series, has long worked as a musician with Lou Reed, Anohni or Rufus Wainwright, among others. She has since released nine studio albums of her own with a depth rare in pop that captures complex emotions and gives equal expression to love and loss. Water began singing after the death of her partner Jeff Buckley in 1997, and on songs like the delicate elegies »To Survive« and »To America,« she processed her mother's death from cancer and allegorically the sickness of democracy in the United States. In 2019, she had a momentous meeting with legendary Afrobeat drummer Tony Allen, whom Damon Albarn introduced to her at a joint concert and with whom she arranged to jam in a Paris studio. Fortunately, that session was recorded, because Allen passed away in April 2020 - 2 weeks after Water's close friend, legendary producer Hal Willner, died of covid. It was against this backdrop and from the session recordings that her ninth studio album, The Solution is Restless, was born: an impressive synthesis of Wasser's delicate songwriting and Allen's polyrhythmic playing. The fact that, despite all the blows of fate, Wasser's music is always redemptive and hopeful is what makes this pop artist so outstanding.