joan as police woman: live at oran mor

Dressed in a tight, backless, black leather jumpsuit as if channelling her namesake Joan Jett, Joan Wasser returns to Glasgow’s Oran Mor to show off the sparkling new songs from her well-received third album, The Deep Field. What transpires, however, lacks much of the lustre we’ve come to expect from this hard-touring lady. Reinforced by her two-man band –Parker Kindred on drums and Tyler Wood on Moog bass – Wasser seems content to let her songs mire in a snoozy lounge vibe and a few of the unfortunate clichés of adult-orientated rock. Kindred’s jazzy rhythms and Wood’s soporific Moog struggle to enliven the core of Wasser’s electric piano and sensual singing, resulting in versions of ‘The Magic’ and ‘The Action Man’ that are too laidback to make much of an impression. There’s an indefinable air of the 1970s about the whole affair, and it’s not just the outfit.

The sorry trend of the first few songs continues even when the trio move on to older material. There’s no doubt that Kindred and Wood are a well drilled, hard working unit, but they take the yearning out of ‘Hard White Wall’. Previously a sexy number from 2008′s To Survive, here it meanders and loses its impact. Likewise, the once-dramatic ‘Anyone’ from debut album Real Life has any edges of emotional vulnerability unwisely smoothed out. Wasser’s voice has lost nothing of its subtlety or range, but the vitality apparent at previous shows is absent tonight. Falsetto backing vocals blur the songs together as the band stick too rigidly to a formula devised to blend in with Wasser’s slick organ arrangements. As a result, old favourite ‘Save Me’ is blunted through a systematic arrangement of inorganic, clean lines, while ‘Eternal Flame’ misplaces its swing as its tempo is altered to match the new material.

One persistent fan at the front conducts a dialogue with her heroine, but other banter is in short supply. The songs from The Deep Field are delivered in a polished, sultry manner, but again there’s something frustratingly lacking. Vocal effect soloing takes the place of other instruments, and the use of Moog instead of bass guitar makes for a synthetic sound and lacks texture, despite great sound in the venue. ‘Nervous’, the best of the new tracks, picks up the pace a little. “I don’t come with a manual / I lost it long ago,” sings Wasser, and I long for her to break out some wildness on the guitar crescendo. ‘The Deep Field’ is another highlight, given a refreshingly minimal approach and delivered in a whisper to the hushed, impressed crowd. Apologising for another ballad, Wasser closes the set with ‘Real Life’. The inventive lyrical touches and subtlety of this early song, with its invitation to “be reckless with me”, find the crowd lost for words – bar one noisy enthusiast at the back of the room who is soon hushed by a curt Glaswegian “Shut up!”

As all three of her albums clearly attest, Joan Wasser excels in making sophisticated, grown-up music. Tonight, however, the sensuality and power of her elegant songs is engulfed and overcome by the subdued backing, muffling her considerable talent and leaving this listener a little disheartened.

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Photo by Man Alive!, used under a Creative Commons licence.

Written by: Lucy Brouwer

Tags: joan as police woman, live at oran mor, the deep field

This entry was posted on Thursday, February 17th, 2011 at 9:31 am and is filed under live reviews, reviews. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.