Joan as Police Woman - To Survive

The sophomore effort from Joan Wasser and her JaPW cohorts is a much more restrained effort compared to the lush orchestral experience of debut album, 2006’s Real Life. This is hardly surprising, given that the album was conceived under the spectre of Wasser’s mother’s ultimately unsuccessful battle with cancer. As such, a mood of plaintive understatement pervades; spartan piano ballads and simplistic guitar arrangements providing the accompaniment to emotionally charged, furtive soul-seeking. The key element is, naturally, Wasser’s expressive vocal, which effortlessly combines foreboding duskiness with feather-light tenderness to produce some genuinely heart-rending and reflective moments. To Be Loved and the album’s closer, a duet with Rufus Wainwright, To America, prove most accessible as standalone tracks, but the concept as a whole is one of mournful philosophising in an album that sets its stall out to define the basic feelings of love, loneliness, anger and optimistic hope, yet doesn’t shy away from revealing the inherent complexities of these states. [Paul Mitchell]