Frankie Cosmos - Too Dark

Music 4 years ago

Frankie Cosmos - Too Dark

Greta Kline is the girl on the F train scanning the subway car’s bounty for inspiration, scribbling her thoughts in a notebook.

As Frankie Cosmos, her muses include New York City, animals, the touring life, memories, friends, growing up—big topics that she distills with a few carefully chosen words and notes and sounds.

Near the end of her brief, brilliant album Next Thing, backed by a simple backbeat and ringing guitars—think the Strokes minus any and all machismo—the 22-year-old breaks down nothing less than the paradox of life in two tidy lines: “When you’re young, you’re too young/When you’re old, you’re too old.” The record’s 15 songs all clock in around the two-minute mark, a brevity born of wisdom rather than laziness. Kline is a keen editor of feelings and fragments.

She knows exactly when to end a song, which can be just as important as knowing when to start one. –Ryan Dombal