Frankie Cosmos - Close It Quietly

As is so often the case with those born to parents in artistic fields, Greta Kline (daughter of Hollywood couple Phoebe Cates and Kevin Kline) had many opportunities to discover her oeuvre.

The benefits of home schooling allowed her the opportunity to go to underground rock shows and get involved in the Westchester music scene after dropping out of university because she found it unaccommodating to her touring schedule. Lucky her.

In the early part of this decade, Kline took up the moniker of Frankie Cosmos, initially solo and then picking up band members along the way. Signing to Sub Pop back in 2017, Close It Quietly is the band’s second on the iconic label and fourth in total. It’s a perfect home; the label is the indiest of independents, allowing acts on their roster the scope to fully indulge their artistic tendencies.

And this is an indulgent album, despite its sparseness of sound and paucity of track length. It totals twenty-one tracks but comes in at forty minutes. It’s always been Kline’s preference to be short and sweet with song lengths whilst frequently having lengthy tracklistings, but here she’s going for broke. The sound is restricted to simply vocals, guitar, bass, drums and occasionally xylophone. As such, every weapon in the arsenal is given its chance to shine.

Kline grabs attention from the off, the opening lyrics ‘the world is crumbling and I don’t have much to say’ (the first part of which is painfully true and the second demonstrably not), acting as a mission statement. Kline has a great deal to say, most of it intriguing. As is her trademark, she takes the point of view of a variety of both inanimate objects (‘Windows’) and organic matter (‘Trunk Of A Tree’) which throw up some inspired, albeit leftfield, lyrics. Best of them is on closing track ‘This Swirling’; ‘I will die trying, I will die crying, I will cry dying, I will die trying, I will try crying’. Quite a mouthful to read, let alone sing, but a true moment of inspiration.

The bass gets its time to shine on ‘So Blue’, the drumming holds ‘I’m It’ together and the wispy wiggle of guitars make ‘Rings (On A Tree)’ a delight. The production is very even, each instrument is high in the mix which allows everything time to breathe and for the listener to hear the capabilities of the band. It’s intimate and deliciously low-fi.

However, such a stylistic choice often has its limitations, especially on an album that’s crammed with a series of mini opuses. At the halfway point, after a clutch of mid-paced songs, things begin to stagnant. The forty-five second ‘Self-Destruct’, a musing with only Kline and acoustic, acts as a palette cleanser before things pick up for the second half.

‘Wannago’ is full Strokes, while ‘Even Though I Knew’ ups the pace significantly. The album is almost operatic in structure with a rapid fire approach as it deftly powers through songs and mood. Perhaps that’s the point; it’s designed to appease the short attention span that the press of a button now offers listeners.

At some points jaunty and at other points solemn, there is an intimacy and lightness of touch which pervades the whole album and rewards the dedicated followers with full access to the latest world Frankie Cosmos have chosen to inhabit. But it can also feel like a slog at points, the starkness morphing into repetition.

Creative people should always be given the space to follow their muse, but there’s also a lot to be said for quality control.