BAS JAN

Ms Steer’s post-punk trio

T makes me feel like a care in the community project most of the time,” Serafina Steer tells Uncut as she reflects on her decade as one of Britain’s best but least fêted songwriters. “I might as well be a drug addict, the amount of time and money I spend on this thing.”

After three superb harpcentric records – most recently 2013’s Jarvis Cockerproduced The Moths Are Real – the classically trained Londoner switched to bass to found spiky three-piece Bas Jan (“a really cool band with really cool women”), first with Sarah Anderson (violin) and Jenny Moore (drums) and now featuring Emma Smith (violin) and Rachel Horwood (drums). “I don’t really enjoy playing the harp and singing any more,” she explains. “It feels a bit approval-seeking.”

A brilliant but reluctant confessional songwriter (“I find it hard to not start from where I am at,” Steer concedes with a sigh), the 35-year-old counts Ian Dury, Mark E Smith and Television Personalities auteur Dan Treacy among her favourite lyricists, and is a match for all of them on Bas Jan’s splendidly awkward debut, Yes I Jan.

“The next album, if it exists, will be more experimental,” she promises. “This is quite poppy really.” Expect more wonders, if it happens.