Vessel by Frankie Cosmos (4/5)

Must Hear Tracks: “Being Alive” “Jesse” “Duet”

Greta Kline’s music has always been her diary. More than 50 Bandcamp releases and two stellar studio albums make for an intimidating catalogue, but her style is anything but. It’s like listening to a close friend speaking comfortably. She’s never been one to speak at length, though. The first two Frankie Cosmos records, Zentropy and Next Thing, were masterclasses on two-minute-or-less indie rock. Vessel, the band’s most recent offering, doesn’t deviate from that tried and true format. This time around, though, the diary is lively to the utmost. It captures the frantic mood shifts of a busy life with effortless honesty and vigor. Boasting a more polished sound, with thicker guitars, boosted bass, and meticulous electronic elements, Vessel is not a reinvention of Frankie Cosmos. Rather, it is a measured expansion of the efficient indie rock they’ve been inching closer to perfecting with each release. At this point, they’re delightfully close.

The most immediate difference between Vessel and previous Frankie Cosmos albums is the level of compositional experimentation and studio sheen. Greta Kline has always been able to inject profound meaning into seemingly plain lyrics, but now the music is just as likely to surprise as her words. The gentle sway of “Duet” trips into a sparse, wandering interlude like a lovestruck teenager losing their train of thought. Then, just as quickly as it disappeared, the groove picks up again and Kline goes back to talking about her “olive oil soft, and laundry warm” beau. Album-opener “Caramelize” starts with a homage to eerie late-60s psychedelia before it snaps into familiar Frankie Cosmos form. The chilly chords of the introduction are replaced with a driving rhythm accompanied by the painfully clever line, “when the heart gets too tender, return it to the sender.” There’s hardly a wittier and warmer way to begin a song about rekindling lost love.

Vessel is packed with deceptively wise words and musical about-faces, but the track that brings it all together most harmoniously is “Being Alive.” Relentless snare drums and thrashing guitars make up the pit-worthy verses, but Frankie Cosmos pumps the brakes hard for the chorus, where the song slows to a crawl and Kline sings “being alive, matters quite a bit / even when you, feel like shit.” It’s a wolf in sheep’s clothing; a statement so direct, so devoid of poetic flourishes, that it ends up being more powerful than any highbrow philosophizing. The entire song plays like watching a fight sequence that warps to slow motion at the moment where everyone is most intricately contorted. Chaos becomes a Renaissance painting. Mania becomes clarity.

Elsewhere, the mood is softer and more vulnerable. “As Often As I Can” finds love blossoming and “Jesse” finds it being killed. Both tracks are remarkably emotive and they work together to paint a complete picture of love’s lifespan. Kline ponders the shortcomings of her body on “Accomodate.” Later, she vows to “walk away from wrong” and take better care of herself (“I’m Fried”). “My Phone” channels Fleet Foxes while mounting a quiet protest against digital dependence. Even when weighty ideas come up, nothing sticks around for long. If there’s any downside to Vessel, it’s that. There’s hardly a two minute stretch that doesn’t contain a song break or a transition that has the same effect. A diary, musical or otherwise, has no rules for formatting, but the album suffers a bit from this lack of more thorough exploration.

Look out the window, see a dog. Open Twitter, Facebook, and YouTube. Close Twitter, forget the rest. Text your mom. Read a depressing article. Get off the bus, trip on the curb. It’s fine; nobody saw you. Things happen fast these days. Thoughts race and attention spans are stretched to the limit. Vessel translates the kaleidoscopic personal and impersonal interactions that make up modern life into a rapid-fire set of musical sea changes. Here, the importance of life itself is packaged next to childlike chants about public transportation. For a band less skilled at turning the mundane into the acute, the Frankie Cosmos formula could become as boring as reality sometimes is. It never goes there, though. It remains vibrant, sincere, and compelling throughout. On “I’m Fried,” Greta Kline sings: “trying to keep it pure, like it was before.” Vessel suggests that her keen renderings of life and love haven’t wavered in the least. If anything, Frankie Cosmos is closer to purity than ever before.

Sources: Genius Lyrics for Vessel. Pitchfork track-by-track breakdown. Frankie Cosmos Bandcamp. KEXP performance and interview.