It’s a blustery day in New York City, and Joan Wasser is contemplating the changing seasons.
“We’ve had a sort of non-committal autumn, as can happen,” she says, gazing out of the window. “But today feels like the weather is doubling down and saying, like, ‘Okay. It’s time’.”
Wasser, aka Joan as Police Woman, has spent the past two decades carving out a niche in the music world. She has forged an impressive and consistently eclectic solo career with some superb records, notably her 2006 debut, Real Life, and The Deep Field, from 2011.
As a songwriter she remains sorely underrated; she has recorded or performed with luminaries such as the Afrobeat pioneer Tony Allen (they made an album together, The Solution Is Restless, from 2021) to John Cale, from Lou Reed to Elton John and from Scissor Sisters to Gorillaz.
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She has played in Rufus Wainwright’s band, was an early member of Antony and the Johnsons (now Anohni and the Johnsons) and spent a chunk of 2025 touring in Iggy Pop’s live band (“just pure joy,” she says; she grew up listening to The Stooges.) “Versatile” doesn’t quite cut it.
Wasser’s starry CV has not overshadowed her own output. Her most recent solo album, Lemons, Limes and Orchids, from the autumn of 2024, clocked up another round of stellar reviews, with many critics noting how sumptuous and “sexy”, as a friend of hers put it, the record sounded.
Still, she agrees that playing Iggy Pop’s “perfect songs” with the punk icon this year has given her a fresh vantage point on her own material.
“When I started playing in bands I was not the frontperson; I was always a band member,” she says; it was only when she was in her mid-30s that she launched her solo career. “And I feel very grateful that I started that way, because it gives me perspective on what’s important for the song in terms of the arrangements and, visually, in terms of the performance.
“In my band I always have my drummer up front, for instance, because who doesn’t want to see the drummer? They’re the most exciting part of the band!” she says, laughing. “But with the Iggy band … I have been fronting my project for 20 years, so just to stand behind him and support him is really just flat-out fun.”
Wasser has clearly settled into the role of frontwoman. Her background as a classical violinist and performing as part of an orchestra helped with both discipline and understanding the roles of other band members. Despite her extensive experience, she claims that songwriting always feels like an untested or unfamiliar practice.
“I literally sit down at the piano or the guitar or whatever, and I feel like I’ve never written a song before,” she says. “I didn’t study. I didn’t go to jazz school. I didn’t do any of that. And in the classical world you don’t really learn very much about music in a certain way; you learn how to perform.
“So I constantly feel like a child every time I sit down at the piano, because I’m not trained on that instrument. I feel like I just put my hands down, I have no idea what it’s going to sound like, and I just work it out in real time. I’m grateful for that, because I think it allows me to stay open to possibilities.”
Wasser has always written personal songs, most notably on To Survive, her beautifully poignant 2008 album, which she wrote in the wake of her mother’s death. Lemons, Limes and Orchids, which was her 12th album, also draws from her life, with many of its songs based around her experience of finding love in a new relationship and the darker side of allowing yourself to be vulnerable in that situation.
“I know this is a controversy in writing in general, but I don’t know if anyone can write from another person’s perspective,” she says. “Like, how is that possible? You can imagine what it’s like to be someone else, but that’s still your perspective of someone else’s perspective.
“So I have written as if I’m other people, but it’s always going to be me.” She shrugs. “I feel incredibly grateful that I have writing as a tool, because I do not know who I would be if I didn’t have that outlet. I don’t understand how anyone else exists in this world.”
Wasser belongs to what increasingly seems to be a dying breed of songwriters, artists who care deeply about the craft. “So I feel very cut off, actually, to what is going on currently in music,” she says. “I’m friends with so many musicians, and we trade suggestions and albums and stuff, [but] I don’t actually know if I’m very equipped to talk about anything that’s current.
[ From the archive: Joan as Police Woman: ‘I don’t measure anything by No 1s’Opens in new window ]
“But, of course, there are people that care about songs and writing a well-crafted song – and if I’m supposed to tell you who they are, I’m going to not be able to,” she says, laughing again. “I worry about those artists getting lost, or not being able to support themselves, [but] I feel like listeners of music are going to demand songs, whether it’s trendy or not to be making them.
“Real lovers of music, not just casual listeners, I think, appreciate well-crafted songs. So I may just be a dinosaur saying that’s never going to go out of style, but that’s fine.” She shrugs again. “I feel like there’s something that makes sense about a song. The compactness of it, the arc of it; it’s like a short story.”
Other parts of Wasser’s life have often been dredged up or referenced at the expense of her own work, most notably her former fiance Jeff Buckley, who has attained legendary status since his tragic death, in 1997, at the age of 30.
There has been renewed interest in Buckley since the release of Amy Berg’s documentary It’s Never Over, Jeff Buckley, earlier this year, which Wasser agreed to take part in. She regularly marks his birthday with touching social-media posts, but the focus on their relationship has occasionally been at the expense of her own work.
“The thing is, I really understand the fascination, and the longing for memories and shared information, because that person was that spectacular,” she says. “And, you know, he is missed every single day. So I really understand that.”
Wasser felt she needed to take part in the documentary “because I was with him for the last three years of his life, so I wanted to make sure that those years were covered. And what is great about it is the raw footage of Jeff, because he is spectacular, and his spirit comes through in that footage.
But “the documentary itself is deeply flawed, in my opinion. There is no talk about the music, really, and it is at times sort of skewed, or lopsided.” She sighs softly. “I realise that, from my perspective, it would be hard to get perfect; I completely know that. That being said, there were a lot of people [and] very important details left out.”
[ Three memorable Trinity debutants: The Smiths, Public Enemy, Jeff BuckleyOpens in new window ]
She has suffered her share of loss over the years. Is she happy now? Wasser breaks into an enormous grin before she relaxes back on to her sofa, the wind rattling the window on this New York autumn day.
“Oh my God, I am so happy,” she says. “I am so grateful and basically shocked every morning when I wake up – because I have freedom, you know?
“I am so grateful that I started putting out my own music when I was 36 and actually had something to say. I’m grateful that it’s slowly built from there, and therefore I have been able to make the records I want to make, and worked with the people that I’ve wanted to work with, and just allowed everything to be very open and possible.
“The possibilities have just felt endless and infinite, and that is the life I could have never imagined I could have. So I feel absolutely grateful – and even a little bit stunned.” She sighs contentedly. “I’m looking forward to just making more music, in whatever way that is. In whatever way that happens.”
Joan as Police Woman is at the National Concert Hall, Dublin, on Tuesday, November 18th
