IT WOULD be unfair to talk of Joan Wasser primarily in terms of the musicians she has worked with over the years, but it is a pretty impressive list.

The Connecticut-born singer-songwriter has toured with Lou Reed, Elton John and Sheryl Crow and been a member of Rufus Wainwright’s band. To cite these names is not to diminish Wasser’s unique appeal – that such rock and pop visionaries were so taken with her soul-based sound is a resounding endorsement.

Having released five albums under the name Joan as Police Woman since 2006, Wasser collaborated with multi-instrumentalist Benjamin Lazar Davis for the recently released record Let It Be You. The back story of the album befits two performers who have a reputation for merging genres and experimenting with new styles. “Music is in essence always an experiment for me,” says Wasser. “I don’t have a formula and I hope I never do.”

Wasser and Lazar Davis met after separate trips to Africa; she had been in Ethiopia as part of Damon Albarn’s Africa Express project – another notable collaborator – and he had studied traditional music in West Africa. They bonded over a gloriously niche subject, Central African Pygmy musical patterns.

“Ben would send me beats and I would respond with a melody and lyrics,” says Wasser. “After the tour we booked recording time and the whole album just poured out of us.” Understandably given Let It Be You’s esoteric influences, the album has been called “leftfield” by several media outlets who claim this is the most wide-ranging work in Wasser’s back catalogue. She is not convinced about such terminology.

“I don’t hear this record as being ‘leftfield’ but I am honestly not sure what that means,” she says. “The song forms are very simple and very pop. In many ways it feels like the most straightforward record I’ve made.”

In 1997, Wasser’s boyfriend, musician Jeff Buckley, drowned in Memphis. In an interview almost a decade later, she described her “traumatic experience of loss. I needed to grieve but I didn’t know how”. Her second album To Survive touched on the death of her mother from cancer, and this time Wasser felt motivated to “talk about it, (to) put it into words and get it out there”.

Having sung from a perspective of grief and sadness at times in her career, it seems obvious that music is a form of catharsis for her. “I think you can imagine what my answer is here,” she says. “Yes, I make music to help me feel and, often, to help me process. This may sound facetious but there’s nothing better than singing about the most painful moments of one’s life over and over again.

“Each time I become more comfortable with the fact that our worlds change every second, without our permission and sometimes in confusing and crushing ways. But sometimes in the most magnificent ways.”

Despite the personal side to much of Wasser’s music, she says that she often fails to recognise her past work when she hears it by chance. “I think ‘hmm, that sounds familiar’, but it takes a while to realise that it is me. It’s like looking at a photo of yourself from a different time.”

As well as playing songs from Let It Be You in Brighton, she and her band will “reimagine” tracks from her entire career as Joan as Police Woman. Wouldn’t fans want to hear the songs as they appear on the original albums, though?

“People will still recognise the songs,” counters Wasser. “They are not being deconstructed to sound like a cubist painting. It’s like Leonard Bernstein conducting the same symphony with a different orchestra – and yes, I just went there.”

Wasser speaks as passionately about the illustrious artists that have featured in her life as she does about her music. Lou Reed, commonly thought to have been a bit of curmudgeon (at least in public) was an “incredibly generous person” according to her.

“About 10 years ago, after being around him for quite a few years before that, he decided I was alright, or safe, and he became warm and welcoming. When I found out I had been playing my music on radio shows I cried. I consider him a mentor.”

Rufus Wainwright, an “uncannily consistent performer” was another hugely influential force in Wasser’s development – she joined his band in 2004. “He opened up the vocal palette for me,” says Wasser. “I am so fortunate he’s in my life and am honoured that he’s loving the new record.”

She may have learnt a lot from such figures, but there can be no doubt that Wasser has become an inspirational artist herself.

The Haunt, Pool Valley, Brighton, Friday, November 18, 7pm, £18, thehauntbrighton.co.uk