'Blasé is not the vibe!'

Known for her torch songs, Joan as Police Woman has had a change of heart. She tells Jude Rogers why she's a proud part of the new wave of strong women singers
Joan Wasser
Joan Wasser. Photograph: Christian Sinibaldi

'When you hear the word 'uncut', does anyone else think of penises, or am I a pervert?" Joan Wasser is standing on the stage of the Borderline club in London, looking glamorous in a silver dress. For those who know Wasser best for her beautiful torch songs - informed by the deaths of her mother and her boyfriend, Jeff Buckley, and recorded under the name Joan as Police Woman - her sass comes as something of a shock. But as she charges on with the show, blinking cheekily when someone in the crowd shouts out how much they love her, and getting the audience to laugh at her stories between songs, it's clear there's much more to Wasser than a tragic past.

When we meet later for tea, she bounces into the room in a riot of purples and pinks and an extraordinary pair of glittery bronze boots. She looks nothing like the stern brunette on the cover of her 2006 debut album, Real Life, or the monochrome Virginia Woolf-lookalike on the front of her new record, To Survive - more like Molly Ringwald's shaggy-haired, bushy-tailed little sister.

I hold up a copy of To Survive and tell Wasser I'm amazed this woman is one and the same person. She cackles and winks. "That's not the album cover I wanted originally, you know. I was going to be Athena holding an olive branch and a sword on top of a mountain, going, 'Rrrraaah!'" She growls so loudly the waiter looks over. "But when the pictures came back, they just looked a little bit blasé. I was like: blasé is not the vibe!" She shrugs. "So we went with 'Don't mess with my hook-nose' instead."

Born in Maine in 1970 to a Latin-teaching mother, who died of breast cancer last year, Joan had a strong female role model from the start. The title track on To Survive talks fondly of the woman who used to sing to her baby daughter, and who encouraged her to take up piano at six, and the violin, which became her main instrument, at eight. Joan adored rock and classical music instantly, falling in love with Mahler's Resurrection Symphony at 13, and working out the guitar riffs to Jimi Hendrix's Axis: Bold As Love on her violin a year later.

Wasser's mother encouraged her to pursue music as a career. "She was so sweet about it, saying, 'Honey, that's what makes you happiest. It's a really difficult road, but you have to do it.'" She didn't like her daughter taking time out from her music degree at Boston University to tour with her 1990s indie-rock band, the Dambuilders, but was happy when she completed her studies. She was fully behind Wasser when she left classical music for a life on the road.

In June 1994, a month before the release of his debut album Grace, Jeff Buckley shared a bill with the Dambuilders; soon after, he and Wasser became lovers. They were still together when Buckley drowned in Memphis on May 29 1997. Wasser talked about him in 1998 in an interview for BlackBook magazine, describing his hatred of being thought of as a pained soul; in 2005, she told the Boston Globe how, when he died, she had to start again "from an infant, really unprotected".

Nowadays, Wasser refuses to answer questions about Buckley (I have been told the subject is off limits by her publicist). Even so, she talks elliptically about this elephant in the room. When speaking of her love life, she refers to "the complicated relationships I used to have with men", before raising a knowing eyebrow. When talking about the pain of the past year, she says she was "forced to learn so much from other unfortunate events". Then she brushes her palms together, as if calling time on her reveries: "Ten or 11 years ago, I didn't learn from the mistakes I've made. I've learned now."

After Buckley's death, Wasser became a session musician and the unhappy frontwoman of Black Beetle, a group composed of the remaining members of her old boyfriend's band. Then, in 1999, came the gig she says saved her: a stint playing with Antony Hegarty, resulting in the Mercury award-winning Antony and the Johnsons album, I Am a Bird Now. During that time, she learned to enjoy writing and singing on her own, and in 2002 emerged in her own right as Joan as Police Woman. Rufus Wainwright asked her to tour with him in 2004, and in 2005 she signed to the Derby-based label Reveal Records, after its boss, Tom Rose, saw her perform at the Birmingham Symphony Hall. "[The label] was small, it was different, it was totally right," she says.

But why choose the name Joan as Police Woman? Wasser smirks, stretching her arms above her head to reveal two unkempt armpits. "Hey, out of necessity! I wanted to be Joan Wasser, but back home, people kept mistaking my concerts for solo violin shows, because that's what I was known for." She was inspired by the 1970s American TV show Police Woman, in which Angie Dickinson played a cop in her 30s who was tough and glamorous. "People who got that reference got more out of it, and people who didn't grew to love it."

Wasser's love of sassy women extends to the inner sleeve of To Survive, which carries a picture of a maid tearing her washboard apart, framed with the words: "Are we not women? A new pleasure to be free."

What does that say about her? Wasser's laugh rattles a nearby chandelier. "It says that I am definitely a feminist, and I have no problem saying so, you know? A lot of people mistake feminism for being against everything, but it's actually pro-women. Damn, it's pro-evolution! It's a pleasure, not a pain, to be a woman, so go out and enjoy it."

The songs on To Survive are both visceral and welcoming, addressing love, sex and loss with refreshing candour. The album shares its early 1970s soul sound and spirit with recent records by Feist and Martha Wainwright, and Wasser says she feels part of a new generation of female singer-songwriters who have the guts to be emotionally direct.

"There were so many strong women who paved an amazing road for us, but I think it's a new thing that we're being accepted by regular people. I watch mums and dads listening to me pouring my heart out, and going, 'I accept that, I like that.' That makes me happier than anything."

These days, Wasser is pretty happy with herself, too. Once a big drinker, she's now teetotal. She's no nun, though, she laughs, because she still "has lots of sex". What's more, she smiles knowingly, she is in her first happy relationship. This comment comes across like a healthy revelation.

As she gets up to leave, she grabs my hand and says thank you. Why thank you? "For being the first person to not ask about Jeff. To ask about me and how I felt and how I feel and what I do. Because that's what I've always wanted!" Another cackle lights up the room. "Thank you for letting me be me"

· To Survive is out now on Reveal Records

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