Joan as Police Woman
To Survive

When Joan months ago in 'Anyone' told me that she wouldn't cry, that only the fluttering of a feather could express how she felt with him and how much she was 'I'm ready to start to be ready', I couldn't even imagine that it would be like that. That when the Wilco of 'Jesus Etc.' arrived, someone would be 'Trying To Break Your Heart'...

When Joan sang months ago about her 'Real Life' with a voice poisoned by joy, with timeless poetry and enchantment, with her piano and violin crying with her, everything was different. I was different. She was different. Now in 2008, the policewoman is back. A splendid self-proclaimed policewoman, with her voice of butter and almonds, with painfully refined work, naked, not at all immediate but warm and enveloping like the summer that is approaching. 'To Survive' comes out this June full of surprises and torpors. It unfolds slowly, gently touches you ('Honor Wishes'), takes you sweetly and painfully by the back, by the wrists ('To Be Loved'), looks inside you ('To Be Lonely'), makes space next to you on a forgotten bench in the cool of the evening. Cautiously breathes near you, smiles at you, talks to you ('To Survive'), and enters gently under your skin, bursting inside you, but gently and begins. 'To Survive' is a mature and sinuous work that knows how to whisper about your momentary joys, your serenities ('Holiday'), your small fears ('To Survive'), as well as the beauty of rediscovering yourself alive ('Magpies'). It's an album sophisticated and intense, halfway between the most delicate pop-soul and the best American jazz-folk to which Wasser has already well accustomed us (beautiful 'To America' with a warm and chorale unexpected ending and with the participation of Rufus Wainwright on vocals). Very elegant, not at all instant, unlike the previous album, it needs to be discovered with passion, with patience. It needs to be explored in the details of its curated winds ('To Be Loved', 'Magpies', 'To America'); in the liquid piano of 'Honor Wishes'; in the folk guitars of 'Hard White Wall' paired with the electronic trails of 'Furious'. It needs to be loved and explored in Joan's aching violins, in the perfect and timely choirs of the splendid and ethereal 'Start Of My Heart', in the profound and intimate lyrics or, again, in that soft and sensual, aching, and creamy voice that makes you fall in love.

Ten little wonderful moments to indulge in amidst perfect arrangements and melodies when the rarefied air seems to stop in closed doors to warm abandoned and stealthy bodies searching for the evening shade or of 'Gardens Of Delight'. A record in which the illustrious presences (Rufus Wainwright and David Sylvian) only serve to adorn a musical beauty that already shines on its own. The pieces unfold serenely and softly on a carpet of refined and beautiful notes. They charm, conquer for their elegance ('Honor Wishes', 'To Be Lonely'), captivate for their taste of life and death (Joan lost her mother this year and fought with her against her terminal illness during the recording of the album), strengthen with their message of life at the very moment when life itself urges you forward.

When months ago Joan in 'Anyone' told me she wouldn't cry, she knew she wouldn't. Perhaps she already imagined how many things would pass. Perhaps she thought of when in front of love and changes, alone, she would find the strength; the strength of the sweetest words, the most therapeutic music, the purest feelings, the greatest emotions to do what is sometimes as difficult as it is natural: 'To Survive'.