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Sometimes
the artist knows best.
Influences: "Life" Sounds Like: "The wind rushing
through the forest."
...and the additional observation: "Beauty is the new punk
rock"
"The general feeling these days," Joan claims, "is
trust no-one, all the media is lying to you...there's such a
sense of distrust in the air. For me, the most subversive you
can be these days is to be totally honest, and to really laud
beauty".
Joan's REAL LIFE album goes a long way to laud honesty, trust
and beauty, and in doing so lauds her own beauty. You might
know Joan from her loud serrated bands The Dambuilders, Black
Beetle and Those Bastard Souls. Or playing more subtly and quietly
in Antony's Johnsons or Rufus Wainwright's band. Some influences
pervade, but this is all together different. It's music that
shimmers, torch-song-like, between categories. It feels adjacent
to jazz while being deeply soulful. The voice and delivery has
raised comparisons to Dusty Springfield, Annette Peacock and
Chrissie Hynde. Like Antony, Joan's music seems to have come
out of nowhere, and yet feels fully-formed, idiosyncratically
individual, all on, and of, it's own. Simply, Joan As Police
Woman feels very Joan.
"I've called it Punk Rock R&B but American Soul Music
is better, I feel like my music is the melding of the two styles
I love most - Soul, that whole encompassing Al Green, Nina Simone
and Isaac Hayes, and then all the stuff that came from Punk
like The Smiths, the Grifters and Siouxsie Sioux..."
"...rock moved very easily into punk for me. I loved X,
the Stooges, the Minutemen. In town there was an all-ages punk
rock club, The Anthrax: thank god for this club! It changed
my life." Here Joan witnessed the likes of Sonic Youth,
Black Flag and Bad Brains, "who all blew my mind".
Joan's musical career, even in a nutshell, can send you weak
at the knees. Her glitter-covered, five-string violin-cum-viola
provided the rhythmic thrust alongside the guitars in The Dambuilders.
Those Bastard Souls (fronted by Grifters guitarist David Shouse
with Joan, Steven Drozd from The Flaming Lips and Fred Armisen
of Trenchmouth) and Black Beetle (which included Michael Tighe
and Parker Kindred from Jeff Buckley's band) followed before
Joan decided to go it alone. But her pal Antony asked her to
join his fledgling Johnsons, and she stayed for years, right
up until Rufus Wainwright asked her to join his band and be
the support act: "I kept trying to make my music a priority
but I loved playing in other people's bands."
Listening to the album, you'll notice she's not hiding behind
that glittery violin or sheltering in the storm of rock's typical
form of expression. "Anger is so easy and I have been angry
for so long. But anger only arises from other feelings you're
not dealing with. I'm trying to get deeper."
"Because I don't have to deal with basic everyday survival,
like killing for food and not freezing to death my music is
about [laughs] love and loss. Beyond that, it's about finding
a way to be truthful with myself, after a really long time running
away from myself. From becoming an adult, facing fears without
fear, or with fear but being fine with it. To trust yourself
enough to admit how you're feeling, which takes a lot of patience.
This record is about learning to be real. Real clear."
Sure, you might want to ask Joan about Antony, Rufus or her
contributions to The Scissor Sisters, Lou Reed, Nick Cave, Sheryl
Crow, Sparklehorse and Depeche Mode's David Gahan. Or about
putting together the house band for the New York segment of
producer Hal Wilner's Sea Shanties project. Or about the one-off
album ("one of my favourite records I've ever been part
of") that she made alongside Shudder To Think's Nathan
Larson, Dambuilders drummer Kevin March and Helium's Mary Timony
under the band name Mind Science Of The Mind. Or her contribution
to Steven Bernstein's cracking jazz covers band Sex Mob ("I
played a wild violin solo on Nirvana's About A Girl"),
or the album she recorded in August 2004 with ex-Throwing Muses/Belly
founder Tanya Donelly. But really, this is Joan's story. Her
music. Her beauty. Her brilliance. As she sings on The Ride,
"starting now, the wait is over." |
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Real
Life
Cheap Lullaby Records
2007 |
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