Greta Kline’s songs as Frankie Cosmos are so filled with a Gatsby-esque sense of desire and longing it’s easy to picture her on the end of a dock, Casiotone in hand, staring off at a green light. Being candid has always been FC’s MO. Her heart is on her sleeve, but after the release of last year’s excellent Zentropy she’s been propelled into next level indie fame with the spotlight glaring down. Her new EP, Fit Me In, is a sonic shift that still has all of Frankie’s indelible trademarks. Musical and romantic partner Aaron Maine of the band Porches produced the album using electronic instruments. Gone are Frankie’s soft strummed guitar but not her tender lyrics.
“I feel like the most beautiful… / when you look at me,” Frankie sings on “Korean Food”. The most beautiful what? We don’t know. Frankie often jumps from idea to idea, but the fact that the thought isn’t finished doesn’t detract from its sentiment. The EP’s most trenchant track is “Young” where Frankie directly rebukes the narrative surrounding her mythos—mainly that the two most interesting aspects of her persona(lity) are her parents and her age. If you didn’t already know Frankie Cosmos was 19 when Zentropy was released and she is the daughter of actors Kevin Kline and Phoebe Cates. These might be fun facts for trivia night, but the conversation surrounding these talking points almost drowned out the music itself. Frankie addresses this directly asking the listener, “Have you heard that I’m so young / and who my parents are?” Over a synth outro she concludes, “I just want to be alive / that’s it.” Let this pigeon out of its hole so it can spread its beautiful wings.
Fit Me In will be released November 13 via Bayonet Records. You can stream it below. And check out Quinn Moreland’s feature story, The World According to Frankie Cosmos, here.
