Likely, Phranc will always be skirting around in her trousers, giving Joe Public the slip. Self-described as the all-American Jewish lesbian folk singer, our denim-with-cuffs-wearing heroine has escaped household-name recognition for years, while gathering a ragtag cult following of folkies, dykes, critics and others whose unlikely obsessions run toward sporting cuffs bigger’n those of Spin and Marty (Annette-era Mickey Mouse Club, remember?) and spoofing Neil Diamond.
Long on talent and enormous energy, Phranc has gone from punk rock to alterna-folk to impersonation and visual artistry and back to again to folk music. Following in the tracks laid by the humorous Goofyfoot EP, Milkman lightly teases, prickles and tickles from the opening bloomed-in-love freshness of “Twirly” (“Got a new girly/Who’s got a keychain as big as a house/La la lala…”) to “Cuffs”, an ode to the wide-upturned fold at the hem of her britches. Yet even the silliness reads refreshingly sincere, as with campfire singalong enthusiasm she sings “I like you ’cause yer not icky,” or when succeeding a C&W balladeer’s downbeat-accented acoustic lead-in, she earnestly warbles, “I’m so Ozzie, where’s my Harriet?”
While she shines most brightly on the two traditional folk songs, the delightfully vigorous “Tzena Tzena” and “The Handsome Cabin Boy”, a sweet ballad in which genders transmute, it is as a nuclear family member that Phranc musters up the most unforgettable material. Underneath all the obligatory blustery sex politics and gender-bender and right at the heart of the matter,
Phranc connects deeply and communicates most effectively when singing the three heartbreaking songs about the loss of her murdered brother. The everyday details of a shared childhood bring tremendous sorrow, as Phranc plaintively wonders about telling kids not to sit too close to the TV lest they go blind, while at the same time promising that all will be well, when it is so clearly not. The fiercely moving “Where Were You?”, on which the singer asks for help, is delivered from the place of longing that can only come after exhaustive confusion and rage, more plainly spoken on “Gary”: “Now I’m a sister to no one…/Don’t kill the fucker who killed my brother/ Punish him.”