by Gianluigi Marsibilio (@gmarsibilio)
The logic of DIY rarely leaves room for an unusual grace, but in Close it Quietly, the new album by Frankie Cosmos, there is room for passages and interferences of pure softness. Greta Kline seems to have found, after a long search for several LPs and albums, a structure and a clearer way to an ideal of limpid and moving beauty.
Pessoa writes in one of his poems: "Minha missão será eu a esquecer" (my mission will I forget) and if the mission is to forget songs like "So Blue" are useful because they build scaffolding in which memories to forget are sacrificed. "I am so blue, I make everyone else blue" is a phrase that opens Kline's coloring pallet, which, like a great painter, is careful to color the stories of her songs with different moods, from the magical lightheartedness of "Cosmic Shop" to the dreamy arpeggios of "A Joke". The album is a flow of 21 songs that are adult nursery rhymes of an artist who has reached a stage of absolute maturity with this work.
The percussive openings of songs such as "I'm It" follow unknown paths in Kline's discography, which proves to be an eclectic storyteller, able not to build complex worlds but simply to tell, with style, her world. Drawing a line of 21 tracks in 40 minutes is a success that shows the zen and balanced attitude of Kline’s writing, which is, even after years, perfectly centered in the soul of Frankie Cosmos. Close It Quietly is a perfect key to reading the project.
There is a compositional brazenness that was expected from other records this year. The songs flow with a great symbiosis, we are faced with 21 pentatonic songs that represent the scale of emotions, feelings, past and immediate future of Frankie Cosmos. Kline's pop is a beautiful example of twee, but after all what the fuck does twee-pop mean?
Close It Quietly doesn't need definitions and labels, it's an ultra-personal record and the alternation of simple elements, both in the sound and in the words, shows it. As for intensity, there's something very close to Lomelda's record, released earlier this year. Kline's pen doesn't write music, it’s the gentle touch of a feather, and they’ve recorded the most adult and mature album of the Frankie Cosmos’ project.