Take a Melancholy Trip With the Music of Frankie Cosmos

Frankie Cosmos is far from a household name at this stage in her career. The Jewish singer-songwriter released her second studio album, Next Thing, in April to wide critical acclaim, with Pitchfork touting “her ability to transform minute-long songs into experiences that resemble hours of intimate impressionistic conversation.”

Of course, to be saddled with wide critical claim is to be saddled with greater expectations, a wider audience, and a greater pressure to succeed. For rising stars, those are the kind of added elements that can tank a promising career; for Cosmos, it’s something she can just ask mom and dad about. Frankie Cosmos, whose real name is Greta Kline, is the 22-year-old daughter of actor-couple Kevin Kline and Phoebe Cates, no strangers to fame themselves.

Frankie Cosmos‘s music sounds like some combination of the stark observations of Moldy Peaches, Courtney Barnett’s softer side, the matter-of-factness of Parquet Courts, and the ethereal noodling of Beach House—which is to say, her sound is uniquely her own. This is especially on Next Thing, when she’s started to more clearly differentiate herself from the legions of shoegaze bands out there.

Her music—synth-heavy pop-rock that borrows from Frank O’Hara as much as it does Bob Dylan—is dreamy, intimate, delicate, playful, vulnerable, and, above all, deeply personal. Cosmos doesn’t mince words when she sings; she can’t afford to, given that her songs are almost universally between 45 seconds and two-and-a-half-minutes. In the aptly named “Schmuck In The Room,” she laments a friend’s romantic choices and croons: If you can’t pinpoint / the schmuck in the room / it’s you, it’s you, it’s you. But don’t mistake her soft voice for a lack of conviction.

Or take “Outside With The Cuties,” where she admonishes her lover, singing, You are bug bites on vacation / you find the sad in everything.

Cosmos hasn’t shied away from her Jewish identity—here’s her band plotting to hide the afikoman before a Passover show—and, at 22, has already been touring for a couple years.

Prior to the release of Next Thing, Kline released Fit Me In, a short EP, and Zentropy, her only other studio album, which was released to little fanfare but did receive critical adoration (sensing a theme?). Before her two studio album, she’d already released over 40 (!) acoustic albums online. Together, they allow listeners to embark on Kline’s musical journey right along with her—from her original nom de plume, Ingrid Superstar, all the way to her more fully realized albums as Frankie Cosmos. Her next tour starts July 27, with dates in the U.S. and Europe. For most musicians her age, that’d be a daunting task; for Greta Kline, it’s another day in paradise.

I like a good “maintenance cry” at least once a day



— frankie cosmos (@frankiecosmos) June 29, 2016

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