New album by Joan As Police Woman: Secret Wishes, Burning Bridges

Man-made climate change has been a concern for writers and directors for some time. Novels from the “Climate Fiction” genre fill entire shelves, and apocalyptic films such as “The Day after Tomorrow,” “Hell,” and “Snowpiercer” regularly depict how humanity fights for survival on a planet that has been destroyed by it.

And pop music? It has not produced any comparable phenomena so far. The industry is surprisingly cautious on the subject. Although there are always prominent exceptions, such as Anohni with the spookily beautiful dance track “4 Degrees”, Miley Cyrus with “1 Sun” or Childish Gambino, who contrasts the relaxed vibe of his song “Feels Like Summer” with lyrics about rising temperatures, water shortages and the death of bees. And the German rock band Die Nerven is currently taking a pessimistic look at the future of humanity in the title track of their strong new album “Wir waren hier”: “We were here/ No plant, no animal/ Was as valuable as us”says the chorus.

In addition, there are increasingly songs that do not focus directly on climate disasters, but still refer to them with individual lines, comparisons and metaphors. For example, Billie Eilish mentioned the burning hills of California in “All The Good Girls Go To” – a sight that the LA-born musician grew up with. This type of subtler thematization can also be found on the recently released tenth album by the American Joan Wasser, who has been making music under the name Joan As Police Woman since 2003.

In the twelve songs of “Lemons, Limes and Orchids” she repeatedly uses phrases that are familiar from climate change vocabulary, such as “the water is getting high” or “the water's warmer than you can ever imagine”. Or she ponders the development of the human species: “I wonder if our species/ Will evolve to be able to give birth to its babies/ Much better.”The 54-year-old never makes appeals; most of the time these sentences are hardly noticeable or can be understood on a general level.

This is particularly clear in the first lines of the mid-tempo song “Long For Ruin”: “It is clear to me that we have the will to slow this descent into Babylon. We cannot afford to hesitate unless we secretly long for destruction.”The hesitation mentioned could be aimed at dealing with the consequences of climate change, but also at wars or even relationships. The musician put it this way in the press release for the album: “We seem to be intent on destroying ourselves. We seem unwilling to share resources. We seem to be turning away from ourselves and thus from each other.”

The sound of this devastating analysis is melancholic but not at all pessimistic. Warm harmonies, hopeful electric guitar touches and the soothing bass lines of Meshell Ndegeocello characterize this song, released as a single, which is one of the best on the album. It begins with “The Dream”, driven by a fast drum machine beat, on which Wasser hands over her vocal melody to one of the synths after the first verse and then dreams herself into the ocean with them.

“Lemons, Limes and Orchids” is Joan As Police Woman's first solo album since “Damned Devotion” in 2018 and the successor to the outstanding “The Solution Is Restless”, which she founded almost three years ago together with the Afrobeat pioneer Tony Allen, who died shortly afterwards, and recorded with the London multi-talent Dave Okumu. The new song “Oh Joan” with its laid-back groove is somewhat reminiscent of this collaboration. The New Yorker may not achieve their cross-genre mastery this time, but a comparison with the three-person project is misleading anyway, as the current album goes in a completely different direction.

The trained violinist, who also plays the piano and guitar, says that her main aim was to showcase her voice, which she produced herself. This focus is particularly evident in the electronically oriented, reduced tracks such as “The Dream” and “Remember The Voice” as well as the dreamy, associative title song, which meanders for over six and a half minutes.

She demonstrates the full range of her voice in the folky three-quarter time ballad “Started Off Free”, in which she climbs unusually high, but occasionally falls into the shallow when singing about love (“My heart is like a burning bridge/ The passage to the past has disappeared”).

This does not change the overall convincing impression of “Lemons, Limes and Orchids”, as it is an atmospherically dense and varied record that develops great power, especially in its quiet moments. Perfect as a companion in autumn – a few thoughts and the climate certainly can't hurt.