Emilie Hanak a.k.a Milkymee is a true cosmopolitan. On her facebook page, she wrote this into the ‘Hometown’ field: “Japan — France — Sweden — Czech Republic — Kabylia — Let England shake.” Currently she’s settling down in Paris, singing in English to a French crowd who love her. Also, she’s scaring me to death. I can’t explain why.
‘Koenji Monkey’ was the first song I’ve heard from her. I instantly liked its cute weirdness, how it mixed sad with comic and childish with clever. She sang in an almost too low, a bit cracking voice that sounded very upfront and casual.
Then I listened to the rest of the tracks on the ‘To All the Ladies in the Place with Style & Grace’ LP, and discovered that she had many voices or, perhaps, personalities. While the musical style doesn’t vary that much from number to number, her vocals do. She sings gentle folk, careless punk, tipsy pop, or switches to experimental mode, pitching her voice down a few notes till she sounds like a grieving ghost. “Genre-less gems,” she quotes someone (I assume), and it’s true after all.