I first came across Joan As Police Woman when she guest programmed Rage last year, and immediately was charmed by her personality and attracted by her mysterious good looks – and this is before I had even heard so much as a note of her music. Real Life is her debut album, though she has been playing in various bands for a long time. While it is definitely jazz influenced, it contains far more substance than the usual modern fare – this is not lounge music. Joan, to her credit relies more on soul than slickness.

There is an almost schizophrenic vibe to Real Life, with Joan as Police Woman alternating between eerie freight-train fuelled guitar tracks and jazzier piano based arrangements.

But somehow Joan’s musical charisma makes it all come together and seem consistent. This ability to enable flow between seemingly disparate styles is obviously aided by her accomplished musicianship, having been classically trained and also serving for many years as a versatile member of many artists’ backing bands. On ‘Eternal Flame’, by far the most infectious (and by Joan’s standards the most conventional) song on the album, her steady guitar playing almost sounds like it is looped, so precise is it its rhythm. This solidity lays a foundation for which the rest of the music can easily shift around, allowing freedom for the other instruments. ‘Christobel’ uses a similar formula, echoing Grace Slick’s Jefferson Airplane folk tunes of the late ‘60s, Joan’s beckoning voice floating ethereally above the dreamily inspired electric eel guitar and sleeping heart rhythm section.

On the other hand, ‘I Defy’ features the sort of jarring piano line that wouldn’t sound out of place as a sample on a Kanye album. The song is built around its deep sensual groove, with Joan and former bandmate Antony exchanging choruses of “ooh, now I’m kissing the real you” and, “ooh, now I’m missing the real you”. Its musical companion ‘Save Me’ likewise centres on crafty piano, but it is Joan’s catlike whispers of “Save Me!” that jump out most, as unsettling as they are tempting.

The word sensual is extremely apt as a Real Life descriptor. Joan’s music is imbued with a subtle sexual power, more sophisticated than your standard Beyonce R ‘n’ b arse shaking, but affecting nonetheless. The atmosphere of the music also comes out in her fairly direct lyrics. In ‘Eternal Flame’, Joan sings, “Yes yes, I wanna have you now/but I can't be the lighter /I can't be the lighter”. Her voice itself is one of the more powerful elements of Real Life – multifaceted and chameleon-like, it changes moods frequently and without warning. This sort of range is increasingly rare in music, but Joan employs it with ease – there is little about this album that feels forced or unnatural. 

Real Life is a strikingly original album. Nobody else sounds quite like Joan. Her sense of melody is most definitely off-kilter, her hooks seeming somehow unfixed, as if even Joan herself does not know where they are going – there is the quality of improvisation about them. Perhaps most excitingly of all though, there is a remarkable range of sounds on this album, a versatility that reflects creativity rather than a lack of a sense of self. It would be wrong to say that Joan as Police Woman is an artist that promises much, for it seems that this promise has already been realised. This is an assured and confident debut.