Joan As Policewoman, officially known as Joan Wasser, is a former member of Antony and the Johnsons and the Dambuilders and the touring partner of Rufus Wainwright; but she is most famous, perhaps, as the long-term girlfriend of the sadly departed and much revered Jeff Buckley.

Since 2006, she has been recording under the moniker Joan As Policewoman, releasing two critically acclaimed, if not widely publicised, albums. Her latest, The Deep Field, which dropped in late January, is her most commercial album to date, and seems to indicate that she is ready to rise from being an artist whose sales are driven by word of mouth to one given serious attention by the mainstream.

During her pretty packed gig upstairs at the O2 Academy, Wasser and her two-piece band air nearly all of The Deep Field and, on first glance, have most certainly achieved the supposed aim of making a more mainstream record.

Any of the material from her new LP could stick to the Radio 2 playlist like pavement chewing gum, fitting neatly alongside Duffy, Rumer and Eliza Doolittle in the slightly jazzy, but ever-so-smoothly-produced genre.

Smooth is actually the operative word for tonight’s gig, with all the good and bad effects it brings. Smooth is good in the sense that Wasser and her band don’t put a note wrong, are charming in their between-songs banter and play numbers that have been written specifically for hooking new people in — very successfully, in fact.

But smooth is also bad in that a lot of the songs feel like the soundtracks to perfume- adverts-in-waiting and lack any real emotion, being just too . . . well, smooth. If you compare Wasser’s output with that of Feist or Adele, then there’s a lack of connection in her song writing. Only later in the gig, on tracks like Run For Love and I Was Everyone, does Wasser seem as if she’s putting herself out there.

The rest is just too . . . well, smooth.