Her stage name IS arresting, but for those unfamiliar with the gorgeous intimacy of her music, it is slightly misleading. When Joan Wasser re-invented herself as a solo artist, after a life spent playing in bands or on the records of more famous people, she listened to a friend who said she looked like Angie Dickinson, the star of the American 70's TV cop show Policewoman. "Like Charlie's Angels, but grittier, less pink fluff" Wasser explains. "And yeah, at a certain point, when I challenged m...

Her stage name IS arresting, but for those unfamiliar with the gorgeous intimacy of her music, it is slightly misleading. When Joan Wasser re-invented herself as a solo artist, after a life spent playing in bands or on the records of more famous people, she listened to a friend who said she looked like Angie Dickinson, the star of the American 70's TV cop show Policewoman. "Like Charlie's Angels, but grittier, less pink fluff" Wasser explains. "And yeah, at a certain point, when I challenged myself do music on my own, I felt ready to take on anything."

Tough cop in spirit maybe, but not in the way she sounds. The multi-skilled musical phenomenon that is Joan Wasser' classically trained violin player, street taught punk rocker, old soul aficionado, vocal diva ? does not play the conventional tough guy. Or conventional anything for that matter. Like the slogan on her website says, Beauty is the new punk rock." Police woman Joan's mission is to find original and ever more striking ways into our collective heart. " am always trying to dig deeper into the emotional experience," she says, "I want to access the most honest place I can, distill it and present it in a way that makes sense musically."

The distance between JAPW's first album Real Life, and her second, To Survive, represents just such a distillation. A collection of songs she wrote mostly in the shadow of her mother's battle with cancer, which ended in her death last year, To Survive centres on Joan as piano player and singer. The guitars are mixed way back and the pop hooks are seamlessly bedded into the idiosyncratic flow of the melodies. "I've become obsessed with taking stuff out, leaving only the most potent elements in place," says Wasser. " got more into blending and integration and subtlety. I just want to be courageous enough to feel and express as much as possible and that means ALL the emotions. True integration".

Joan Wasser has never stopped learning. She started with the violin, offered at her elementary school and later studied music at college in Boston. Here she learned to love the unusual harmonies of the great modern composers, Shostakovitch, Bartok and Sibelius. But her ambition was never to get stuck playing music that had already been perfection over and over: "I used to play pieces composed by my teachers, which I liked mainly because there was room for interpretation and they hadn't been played to death". "After graduation she fetched up in a series of art rock bands, starting with The Dambuilders. When both her violins got stolen after a gigs, she found a customized 5 string violin/viola in a second hand shop "which I liked because of the emotionality of the low strings. If I never have to play high notes on the violin again, I would be happy."

Wasser had acquired a considerable reputation on the East Coast alternative rock scene as a first-call side player. She worked with Lou Reed on his album The Raven, played in the band Hal Willner assembled for his Leonard Cohen tribute concert, was the musical director for Hal Willner's Neil Young tribute and was an integral part of the inception of Antony and The Johnsons another step on the learning curve. "I'd been playing really loud music for a long time and this was like returning to chamber music, a space where there was room for gentleness and sensitivity."

In the early 2000's, Wasser became a full time member of Rufus Wainwright's band. "He forced me to use my voice in so many different ways because he was always very specific about the timbre of backing vocals he wanted. Performing with Rufus was like a 2 and a half hour work out. Really intense. It pushed me to pay attention to detail."

Crucially for what was to come, Wainwright invited Wasser to open his shows with a solo spot. She recorded her first album intermittently during this touring with Rufus. One of the most beautiful songs, I Defy, was a duet sung with, and about, Antony Hegarty. Many featured string and horn players from her session days. She recorded Real Life in a Brooklyn studio, Trout Recordings, which is run by producer Bryce Goggin, a firm believer in ancient analogue equipment.

Joan was intent on capturing the sound of her trio playing together live. She stayed with this basic premise, studio and producer for her second album, To Survive. 'Music is about people playing together not manipulating sounds on Pro-Tools', she says. "It's an act, not a process."

When Tom Rose, who was considering starting a label (now REVEAL records) saw Joan play at Birmingham Symphony Hall, opening for Rufus, her solo career took off. Soon after the release of her first single, the Ride, Wasser had the critics swooning all over Europe. Where British audiences led, others swiftly followed. Her most vivid recollection of the acclaim that followed in the wake of Real Life is of a concert JAPW played in Belgrade. "Everybody knew all the words and were singing along. It was amazing."

Because of her European classical roots, but mainly because she is irresistibly drawn to do things differently, Wasser is quite happy to be a cult star over here while remaining a comparative unknown back in the States. "I love New York City, and I love Brooklyn, which is why I still live there" she says, "But I don?t love ALL of the USA."

She voices her misgivings about America on one of the most extraordinary songs on To Survive. Originally inspired by the suffering of her mother, To America blossomed into a reflection on the corruption she sees as rife in her home country. "I feel like America has come down with terminal cancer, because of all the money that has been diverted into ?protecting? our safety."

Though she recently performed at a benefit concert for Barack Obama, Wasser insists that she is not only a protesting singer songwriter. What I write is about my relationships and my feelings and some of those feelings are anger at the helplessness I feel regarding the hideous choices of the US govt. First and foremost, I am a lover." Holiday is one of several songs on the new album that documents the live-in-the-moment euphoria of new love. Others, such as Magpies, which references her namesake Joan Of Arc, are so uncategorisably JAPW as to defy easy description. "When I was in England I became obsessed with your bird, the magpie, powerful, very determined and quite vicious. It's about confronting my fears.

The title track catches the overall tone of the record best. A haunting piano ballad with a melody that refuses to settle, To Survive was inspired by a lullaby her mother used to sing to her as a child to allay her recurrent fear that was about to be burned at the stake, like the other Joan. "I still feel like that as an adult sometimes," Wasser says cryptically. "And I don't edit out or water down those feelings. Why should I? Everything I do comes from my heart."