Joan Wasser's splendidly slinky, slow burning debut record was first released in the UK last summer, but, like a dawdling pleasure cruiser, has taken a year to cross the Atlantic. In this time it's unexpectedly become one of my most frequently played albums. This kind of statistic, now casually available at the stroke of a mouse, can be disconcerting. As a critic you like to fancy yourself never resting in the quest for extreme sensation-- strictly Japanoise drum megacircles, coruscating digital darkwave, and the new Aly & AJ single for me, pal-- so what to make of the fact that, strictly speaking, the most useful record you've heard all year is languidly more-ish AOR? Should we be ethically obliged to link to our last.fm profiles every time we file another esoteric end of year list? Maybe all records should only be reviewed a year after they come out.
One of the reasons Real Life has proved to be such a personal standby, and also why it's such a hard record to write about, is that, just as it slowly insinuates its way into your routine, it's a record about achieving commonplace happiness, taking a breather from drama-- the kind of thing that usually writes white, at least for a critic.
Joan as Police Woman, like Blondie, is a band-- also featuring the sterling Ben Perowsky and Rainy Orteca-- but, as with the inspirational Angie Dickinson, it's essentially a one-woman show. Wasser has a distinguished résumé: a teenage punk and Mahler freak, she trained as a classical musician, played Hendrixian five-string violin in early 90s Bostonians The Dambuilders, and has performed and arranged in both Antony's Johnsons and Rufus Wainwright's band.
Wasser was also Jeff Buckley's partner from 1994 up to his death, and though it's undoubtedly creepy to speculate about someone's private grief, this loss feels key to her subsequent development. Although she'd contributed to songs in the Dambuilders, it was only really in the wake of Buckley's death-- first performing alongside his band as Black Beetle, then on her own-- that she purposefully began songwriting.
You wouldn't have to know the biography to detect connections. This isn't to imply some simplistic one-way influence, but rather to suggest a more mysterious musical affinity. The very 6/8 and turbid harmonies of "Eternal Flame" conjure up ghosts of Buckley's own galloping "Grace". And when the lyric reaffirms "I can't be the lighter of your eternal flame," you can't help but hear a response to one song we know Buckley wrote about her, "Everybody Here Wants You", and its line "You're just the torch/ To put the flame to all our guilt and shame..."
Real Life, as the title suggests, feels like a record about stepping back from the brink of that kind of conflagration, learning to live with the everyday consequences of romanticism. The gorgeous title track breathily pleads "be reckless with me", but only in the context of post office queues and spectacles and gentlemen called Jonathan. The deliberate way Wasser unfurls her voice around the simple chorus-- like a cat slowly stretching awake in a pool of sunlight-- is as stately and exquisite as a Bach minuet.
Buckley himself actually makes an appearance on "Flushed Chest", spied in dreamy twilight, like some modern-day Orpheus back from the underworld. But the song doesn't feel like a work of mourning. Wasser sings "the waterfall was rushing through you", and-- maybe it's just me?-- I'm put in mind of the grace of Rilke's concluding sonnet to another Orpheus: "And though Earthliness forget you, To the stilled Earth say: I flow. To the rushing water speak: I am."
Elsewhere, on the brassy "Anyone", the record prowls with the randy Memphis languor of Dusty Springfield or Willie Mitchell. And Antony Hegarty shows up on "I Defy", elaborating on Wasser's marvelously knotty way with vocal harmony. Of course there are moments of drama: on the spooked "Save Me", or, especially, "Christobel", which trails sepulchral clouds of feedback like a Coleridge poem performed by a seething PJ Harvey.
But the record is at its best on tracks like "The Ride"-- just a wash of electric piano and strings. You might mistake it as a mellow supperclub cabaret, world-weary resignation to routine, the kind of sumptuous melancholy you get from Mike Post's theme to "Taxi", even. But as Wasser sings "Starting now, the wait is over-- as long as you jump the ride..." you believe her. Emerging from grief, stepping into the light, Real Life feels like a wonderfully fresh start.
