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Positively Phranc

Although Positively Phranc is only her third album, everyone knows that Phranc has already earned herself a place in rock history. Her debut with a shameless splash as "the all-American Jewish lesbian folksinger" in 1985 cleared the way for Tracy Chapman, Suzanne Vega, et al, to change the face of pop music four years later. As Ann Powers noted in the San Francisco Weekly in June of 1989. "Phranc was a punk rocker who one day declared herself a folksinger and de-mustified that term for a whole new set of urban malcontents." Even trickier, Phranc has been able to leaven that punk anger with a dry, selfdeprecating wit. Bart Bull, writing for Spin. put it like this: "(Phranc assumes) that a sense of justice and a sense of humor don't necessarily cancel each other out."

With Positively Phranc continues to expand the already broad range that distinguished her first two efforts. Produced by Warren Bruleigh (Violent Femmes, Lou Reed, Throwing Muses), Positively showcases a Phranc who is at once funnier and more serious, harder-rocking and more lyrical than before. Standout tracks include the unabashedly tenderhearted first single, "I'm Not Romantic," the rollicking "'64 Ford" (on which she's propelled by Rough Trade's Two Nice Girls), "Gertrude Stein" (a provocative remake of Jonathan Richman's "Pablo Picasso," on which Phranc gleefully assassinates Ernest Hemingway), "Surfer Girl" (an effecting_a cappela duet with Syd Straw on the Beach Boys' dewyeyed tribute to the Nymphet Eternal), "Hitchcock" (a quirkly little gem produced by ex-Blasters leader Dave Alvin, on which Phranc finds reflections of her lover in a cavalcade of movie heroines), and "Outta Here," an elegy for the friends Phranc's lost to AIDS. Finally, there is "Tipton," a superbly-written account of the life and death of Billie Tipton, the remarkable Tacoma-based woman and jazz musician who passed as a man for 50 years.

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