Joan As Police Woman @ TheFactory Theatre, Sydney(9/6/11)

Tue 14th Jun, 2011 in Gig Reviews

The first problem tonight occurred before the doors even opened. It seems Joan As Police Woman’s Australian fan base has dwindled alarmingly, to the extent that the Enmore Theatre, Joan Wasser’s original venue for her one Sydney show, sold less than 400 tickets (so the doorman says). The prospect of not coming close to filling even half of the Enmore was too much for promoters, so they switched the thing to the Factory Theatre down the road in Marrickville.

One’s thoughts immediately turn towards why such a miscalculation occurred – has Joan’s popularity in Australia waned that much? Her latest album The Deep Field certainly was not a patch on her previous albums To Survive and Real Life, but those two records surely placed her on a plateau where she would fill the Enmore.

It seems not, and Wasser was not the only one regretting the ignominious change of venue. Support act was Sydney’s own Leroy Lee, who played in a deadened atmosphere to the few punters who both knew about the venue change and wanted to get there early. Lee’s inoffensive acoustic songs draw a vague comparison with one of Wasser’s collaborators, Joseph Arthur, possibly not in a good way, but ultimately a true impression of Lee must be reserved for a day when he is in a smaller venue, and perhaps headlining. A sterling effort, nonetheless.

Joan As Police Woman emerged on stage wearing a black leather jump suit, something she alluded to constantly throughout the show. Indeed, Wasser remains an astonishing looking woman, her porcelain features framed by that familiar straight dark hair. But as the awe inspired by her charisma subsided, this show turned into a very boring one indeed.

The songs on The Deep Field are alarmingly inferior to those on her first two albums (perhaps, as has been critically noted, due to her first albums being raw emotional responses to the death of fiance Jeff Buckley on Real Life and then her mother on To Survive), and it was naturally this material she leaned most heavily on tonight. Single The Magic came and went in a inelegant stupor. Gone, unfortunately, is poetry and subtlety in favour of something that verges on libidinous carnality. In the place of melody is a strange soul-influenced groove, and in place of tenderness is a kind of sexual aggression.

Flash and Forever and a Year drift by without any sort of intrigue or energy, although album highlight The Action Man does deserve plaudits for its slow-burning warmth. Ultimately though, Wasser’s new direction, while brave, perhaps finds her on shaky ground. And in the process of moving away from what made her great, given the miserable ticket sales, she has lost a fan or two.