Joan As Police Woman

★★★★ Joanthology PLAY IT AGAIN SAM. CD/DL/LP Reissue bonanza offers a chance to trace the singersongwriter’s arc. Songwriter, interpreter, pianist, collaborator, – even for an accomplished violinist, Joan Wasser has strings to her bow. They resonate particularly hard this summer: this triple CD compilation, complete with Live At

The BBC disc, spans her 15 years as a solo artist, while her potent first three albums – 2006’s debut Real Life, 2008’s

To Survive and 2011’s The Deep

Field – are being reissued on alluring coloured vinyl. Joanthology is a trove of guest performances (Anohni, David Sylvian, Rufus Wainwright) and cover versions (She Watch Channel Zero, a new deconstruction of Prince’s Kiss), signs of her reach and fluidity. Her own torch-song complexities and late-night intimacies are never eclipsed, though, whether downtown nocturnes (Christobel; To Be Lonely) or the filthy disco of Steed (For Jean Genet). Such is her scope, three discs feel like a beginning.