Arts & Culture
TEST SPINS: Frankie Cosmos — Next Thing
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The universe of NYU student Greta Kline’s DIY indie rock project Frankie Cosmos is a warm, velvety one, in which a healthy suspicion of reality and adulthood, and a relentless concern (as playful as it is pulsing) with the personal, the intimate and the female, reigns artistically. Next Thing is a narrative exploration of the love, intimacy, anxiety, dreams and desires that come with being a young person in the world: subjects which Kline first excavated on 2014’s Zentropy, as well as her massive portfolio of Bandcamp-released music. My knee-jerk reaction was that the album sounded identical to Zentropy. However, after a full listen of Next Thing, judging the album’s fundamental sonic and sensual similarity to much of Kline’s previous work seems about as productive as noting that the chapters of a novel, or stanzas of a poem are written in the same style, and follow the same story, of the same deeply compelling character. This reaction reframed as an open-minded observation arguably reveals the greatest strengths (and potentially the titular inspiration) of Next Thing.