Cult singer/songwriter Joan Wasser took her audacious stage name from the old Angie Dickinson police series with its intimations of retro righteous glamorous action. At the same time, she hailed Al Green’s catalogue as her desired musical template. Somewhere in the middle, she has forged her own idiosyncratic solo career, though her time with Antony and the Johnsons, enjoying the healing balm of “gentle people and quiet music”, appears to have influenced her twelfth studio album.
Lemons, Limes and Orchids is described as a “nocturne about love and loss”. Wasser experienced both deeply when her then-boyfriend Jeff Buckley drowned just as the world was falling in love with his spine-tingling music. While Wasser’s new album is soft rather than soaring, it does share a sense of dramatic space with Buckley’s music, realised by the august company of bassist Meshell Ndegeocello and session veterans for Elvis Costello, David Byrne and Alanis Morisette.
The music is carefully calibrated but gives off a warm glow, from the slinky electro pop flow of The Dream to the precise caress of Full Time Heist. There is a Prince-meets-Joni Mitchell quality to Wasser’s sultry enunciation as she beckons the listener to lean in on dreamy electro funk number Back Again.
She sounds wide-eyed in rapture on With Hope In My Breath and husky and beseeching on the intoxicating psych folk blues of Started Off Free. Long For Ruin is a siren call for the salvation of humanity, expressing big feelings in an intimate setting, while the title track is a tremulous ballad on electric piano and stately guitar. Heading to a low-key conclusion, Safe to Say is soundtracked by forlorn twanging bass and a hint of cocktail jazz ambience before Wasser ends up fully in the lounge bar on final track Help Is On Its Way.