Article by Marzia Picciano | Photo by Roberto Finizio (archive)
Joan Wasseror better Joan as a Policewoman she is beautiful, in everything she does and how she does it. The live broadcast yesterday 17th October is no exception Milan, Santeria Tuscanythe only date to present his brand new, very sophisticated mix of blues, rock, Motown and soul to the Italian public Lemon, Limes and Orchidsan album that, if listened to in its entirety, descends smoothly into the soul with delicacy, despite the terrible weight of the words it carries with it. Same thing last night. The drink you crave at the weekend is also the one that gives you the most painful awakenings, especially if you overdo it.
Maybe it's because Wasser has something that is truly feminine or even better, feminine, an incredible magnetism, which acts centripetally on the synapses of those who listen and in this case see. Maybe it's because she's really beautiful anyway, and this, as the Hellenics teach, helps: how could we not be attracted to beauty? And so, the formula that Joan puts together in making music undoubtedly pursues this assumption: telling us horrible things about how we and this world are falling apart, while serving us and enveloping us in beauty. Terrible, how can you not love it?
It may also be that there are few singer-songwriters who, in an ideal – and very personal – Olympus of women who have made their femininity the basis of an elegant, and in any case intrinsically rock, musical production (and who do not necessarily always have to smash guitars on stage), at least as far as the soul is concerned: I think of Cat Power, PJ Harvey, Feist, St Vincent just to name a few. Maybe it's because he's over fifty anyway and his skin gives off the light that my pseudo-mid-thirty-year-old skin struggles to find even in these days between a still summery Palermo and a wet, very wet Milan. Someone apparently couldn't make it this evening due to the bad weather,”well it's also fun to get wet, no?” jokes Joan. Maybe she doesn't know that there is a part of Italy that is sinking in the rain, but I don't blame her. She is beautiful in this tunic with fuchsia shoulder pads and her hair pulled tight, I'm fighting against the humidity that makes mine look like a basket of brambles, but I'm here just to let myself go.
Lemon, Limes and Orchids she abandons the more '90s nuances that we like so much about her and exalts Joan's extreme soul tendency like few others, one that in short as an artistic reference has Nina Simoneplays three instruments, has worked with – to put it badly – anyone who today still has historical artistic credibility in people's minds; maybe it won't be his most decisive, yet it doesn't seem that this is the objective of ours, but preferably to enchant, capture, invite to a more precise reflection on what is the key question posed to us in what is the launch single of the album: “It's hesitation we can't afford/Unless we secretly long for ruin”.
Wasser talks to us about everything that the theories of generational equality have been telling us for a long time, since we had no qualms about using terms like “Third world“, in short, the situation here is bad for your children, and now, when we are all burning alive, we have been educated in a culture of self-sabotage so effective that the climate change it is added as an extreme punishment or anointment for everything that does not work in the illusion of perfect well-being that we try to live. And I'm still there wondering, while I sway: maybe in the end, it's me, in my total inability to think well, who wants to go towards the ruin of myself, including my happiness. Oh Joan, you tell me, you really seem free to me.
While I meditate on the latest developments of my existence with the gravity of a world crisis (mine, at least) I have arrived at the moment in which our Wasser begins to put the discussion into action with The Dream, in a sort of dream space that sees her sway gently to the keyboards, in his training with Ben Perowsky to the battery e Rainy Orteca on the bass. Wasser will pass in two sets, well separated to give us 15 minutes to “mingle and know each other”, from the keyboards, to the guitars, to a Yamaha grand brought onto the Santeria stage and which fights for place with the basses and the other guitars placed at the back, Orteca and Perowsky's drums.
The two are two delicate companions, perfectly blended in Wasser's aura, they follow our policewoman as the cameras of an American series would do on all the interpretations that our heroine manages to give to her texts. It is an intimate dialogue, made up of virtuosity (of note is that of Orteca's solo in the first set) and flashes of energy which are immediately brought back to the basis of the fascinating and fascinated malgama of our heroine. On Started Off Freesitting at the piano, manages to give physicality to that feeling of letting go without even touching the keys, simply by singing. Warning Bell returns to play in the veins of the dedicated audience, reawakening the love for the singer cemented over years of activity.
If the first set seems to touch everything delicately, in the second act the jamming sessionsstarting from the long instrumental session of the title track, we arrive in a delirium – always extremely contained and as mentioned, fascinated – to The Magic And Chemmieuntil the encore with a solo di Real Life and the chorale of Tribute to Holding On. And so we arrive at the end of this concert with a unique feeling in our hearts: we must never say no, we must never give up that irrationality that fascinates us, we must look at madness to learn not to do without it but to tame it and train it to our only pleasure. Never stop looking for the alchemy to release me from my maze. Joan's word.
Click here to see the photos of the Joan As Police Woman concert at Santeria Toscana 31 in Milan in 2022 (or browse the gallery below).
JOAN AS A POLICEWOMAN – The setlist of the Milan concert
Set 1:
TheDream
Full‐Time Heist
Warning Bell
Remember the Voice
Long for Ruin
Started Off Free
Hard White Wall
Tell Me
Lemons, Limes and Orchids
Set 2:
Back Again
Flushed Chest
Valid Jagger
The Ride
Oh Joan
Eternal Flame
The Magic
Chemmie
Encore:
Real Life
Tribute to Holding On
Daniel D`Amico for SANREMO.FM