8

Joan At Last

So this is Joan As Policewoman, I know there's been a tremendous amount of hype around that name, with her popping up on every cool indie person's blog or as a friend on their myspace, with Joseph Arthur contributing his ubiquitous presence to her recordings somewhere along the line, with a great wad of press acclaim and all these amazing collaborations tucked into her itinerary, but what's the music like?

She's got a Macy Gray-like voice, which I suppose is better than having a David Gray-like voice, and a musical style that is über cool, maybe a bit too über cool, with jazzy everything in the instrumentation, in a very American way. 'Flushed Chest' doesn't come across as winning single material, a strong album track at most. It seems, contrary to popular opinion, that this music is not the kind of thing that is gonna knock you on your ass on first hearing, but rather pass you by rather unceremoniously.