Frankie Cosmos (aka Greta Kline) writes songs that are as close to one gets to a pure hybrid of pop and poetry. Her acknowledgment of Frank O'Hara as a significant influence makes a good deal of sense; like O'Hara, her work is both personal and abstract, economical, and infused with humanity, "between two persons" rather than a communication between listener and artist. For those concerned with Kline's overtly twee aesthetic, worried that an overdose of saccharine will blot out any other subtle flavoring, her work contains self-deprecation and displacement in good countermeasure. The balance of sweet and salty feels not just purposeful but realistic.
Fit Me In, a compact and efficient EP portending a more fleshed-out full-band LP in 2016, is an experiment in what Kline's songwriting would sound like given nearly all electronic instrumentation. A collaboration with frequent musical partner Aaron Maine of Porches, Fit Me In is more in line with Kline's prolific home recordings than a full indie pop record like Zentropy (opener "Korean Food" appeared first on 2013's self-released Daddy Cool). Drum machine and synth-heavy, this is true bedroom pop—so intimate as to show the rumpled coverlet and the minute, ancient, nearly unnoticeable stains on the carpet. As is Kline's wont, these songs are little glimpses into her fully realized universe, less verse-chorus-verse pop confections than open-ended, contemporary poetic constructions that don't stop where the recording ends. Like poetry, they require reading and interpretation and us to be engaged as listeners, in communication with Cosmos; art that exists "between two persons" requires dialogue.
"Young" in particular is arch and sly, a response to media commentary that would seek to cast Kline as a fresh-faced ingenue, a character in a box rather than a real, complicated young woman. "I heard about being young/ But I'm not sure how it's done.../ Something about fun," she sings. You can interpret me, she seems to be saying, and I'll interpret you right back. In "O Contest Winner", she boasts "No need for a retest/ I know I'm a genius," tongue firmly in cheek, again pushing against others' expectations of her and her work. Such bragging is usually the province of hip-hop, and to hear it in delicate indie pop context could feel self-conscious or appropriative, but in Kline's subtle delivery it sounds both sincere and welcome, both a refutation of the idea that female artists must always minimize their senses of self-worth and an awareness of the sheer absurdity of any declaration of ego.
"Korean Food" and "Sand" are both tender etchings of the everyday nature of real love, a theme Kline excels at exploring; her version of love is not grand or epic, not forced into any particular narrative arc. She finds love in moment-to-moment minutiae, in the smallest pleasures and least valued rituals, without weighting those moments too heavily: "And touch all the books outside the Strand/ Their oldest pages soft like sand."
There's a reason we're captivated as a society by well-written diaries—at their best, sketches of others' lives as they live them allow us chances to slow down, to connect and to understand one another that we rarely encounter in a highly relational world. Greta Kline is a master at the art of the musical diary—never confessional in a way that feels exploitative and lurid, but tender, intimate, and real nonetheless. We're fortunate she keeps letting us into her world in this way.
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