Frankie Cosmos – Inner World Peace (Coloured Vinyl)

A few things happened before the warm day I met the four members of Frankie Cosmos in a Brooklyn studio to begin recording their album. Greta Kline spent a few years living with her family and writing close to 100 songs, spreading her empathy from navel to moon, making everything warm, close and reflexively humorous

In music, everyone loves a teenage sensation, but Kline has never been more intriguing than now, when she's been one of the most prolific songwriters of her generation for a decade. She's in my mind among the writers, other observant alchemists like Rachel Cusk or Sheila Heti, but she's funnier, which is a charm typical of musicians. Meanwhile, Frankie Cosmos, a rare, fading democratic entity called a band, had taken a pandemic hiatus, not knowing if they would continue. In the openness of that uncertainty, they got together and planned to hang out and make music together for the first time in nearly 500 days

From the variety of music they wanted to work with, they created Inner World Peace, a collection of Greta's songs that were changed and shaped by their time together. While Kline's musical tastes at the time tended toward the 1980s indie rock she had loved as a teenager, keyboardist Lauren Martin and drummer Luke Pyenson cite "droning, meditation, repetition, clarity and intentionality" and "'70s folk and pop" as references for how they approached their parts. Bassist/guitarist Alex Bailey says that at the time he referred to it as their "ambient" or "psych" album

Somewhere between these textural elements and Kline's penchant for concise pop, Inner World Peace finds its balance. Setting up camp at Figure 8 Studios in Brooklyn, the first order of business was to project giant colorful slides the band had made for each track. Co-producing with Nate Mendelsohn, my partner at Shitty Hits Recording, we wanted to bring out FC's aesthetic quirks. The mood board for "Magnetic Personality" features a neon green and black checkerboard, a screen shot of the game Street Fighter with "K.O." in bold red letters, and a cover of Mad Magazine with the words "Spy Vs. Spy!"

The Top Secret Files" On tracks like "F.O.O.F." (Freak Out On Friday), "Fragments" and "Aftershook" the group shows its most psychedelic and playful side by incorporating fuzz solos, drum pieces and other adventurous sounds. An internal logic strengthens everything, and in their most proggy moments, Frankie Cosmos are simply a one-take band that doesn't miss the mark. If they sound wildly and freshly different on Inner World Peace, it can only be because they are finding themselves more and more. Inner World Peace excels at relaying the emotions it holds. When Kline sings about wanting to let go of thoughts in the towering "Empty Head," her voice is carried by a bed of synths and harmonium that exudes calm. When her thoughts become hurried and full of desire, so does the band, jumping from word to word as if they can't fit it all in. As a group, they carry it all deftly and with constant consideration for Kline's point of view. Greta says, "For me, the album is about perception. It's about the question 'Who am I?" and whether or not the answer is important. It's about quantum time, about the possibilities of invisible worlds. The album is about me moving in a new context. I'm a teenager again, living with my parents. An adult who, in an act of love, has chosen to live with my family. Time has propelled us forward, aging us, but also freezing us. If you don't leave home, who are you to the world? Can you take the person you discover there out with you?"

- Katie Von Schleicher