Greta Kline is low-key one of the most prolific songwriters of her generation, and she’s weirdly uncomfortable with that label. “People tend to think that I’m Frankie Cosmos,” she says, a little annoyed. “But it’s a band. I’m Greta.” She’s been trying to hammer that into the public’s skull for years, and it still doesn’t quite stick. Sure, the band’s name sounds like a solo project. Sure, most of the early stuff was just her and a guitar. But the latest record, Close It Quietly, is something else entirely — the most collaborative Cosmos effort yet, which is saying something for a band that never quite stops evolving.
The new album sounds like a diary entry scrawled across a thousand sticky notes, one that’s surprisingly coherent for a project that came together through constant change. “We just keep getting better at communicating as a band,” she says. “It’s always been collaborative, but now it feels like we know how to do it without wanting to kill each other.”
Part of that growth came from ditching longtime producer Hunter Davidsohn in favor of Gabe Wax, whose touch might seem heavier if you read the press release. Greta’s quick to squash that perception. “People hear the word ‘producer’ and think the guy made the record or something,” she scoffs. “It’s still my songs. It’s still our sound. Gabe just helped pull it all together without messing up what makes us, well, us.”
There’s a weird paranoia that comes with the whole “producer” thing. Greta knows that women who write songs — especially women in indie rock — constantly have to prove that their art is actually theirs. “Like, if you see a dude producing a record, no one questions who wrote it. But with women, it’s always like, ‘Did she really write that?’” She rolls her eyes so hard you can practically hear it.
For someone so concerned about staying authentic, she’s surprisingly okay with reworking old material. One of the album’s highlights, Want to Go, was actually written years ago and nearly didn’t make it. “We tried to put it on Vessel, but it just wasn’t working,” she says. It took bassist Alex Bailey pushing for another shot to finally get it on Close It Quietly. “He was like, ‘Why are you just letting this one die?’ And honestly, he was right. We made it work this time. Sometimes it takes years to figure out how to do justice to a song.”
That kind of patience isn’t just reserved for the songs. Greta’s parents even got in on the action this time around. On the track Great Purpose, her dad Kevin Kline and mom, Phoebe Cates, lent their talents. “It was the only time I got to sit in the producer’s chair and boss them around,” she laughs. “My dad played like 20 different piano parts before I settled on one. It was nice to actually say, ‘Nope, not that one’ to your dad without getting grounded.”
Her rapid-fire approach to songwriting almost feels like a throwback to Guided by Voices — a comparison she’s heard way too often but doesn’t entirely hate. “Robert Pollard is just the king of not giving a shit about song length,” she says. “That’s kind of the goal: make it good, make it quick, and move on.”
And then there’s the weirdest part of the album release: the “puppy edition.” That’s right, Sub Pop’s brilliant idea to include a stuffed animal with the album. “We all love stuffed animals,” she shrugs, as if it’s the most obvious thing in the world. “It just made sense. Plus, it’s hilarious when people send me pictures of their dogs sniffing the package. You wouldn’t believe how many people actually bought it just for the dog.”
There’s something about Greta Kline that’s just hard to pin down. She’s simultaneously exhausted by the industry’s BS and utterly unfazed by it. “I don’t write songs for anyone but me,” she says. “If people dig it, great. If not, I’m still gonna keep making them.”
And that’s Frankie Cosmos in a nutshell: unpretentious, unpolished, and entirely their own. Whether it’s a 60-second burst of existential angst or a three-minute confessional, it’s always just Greta and the band, making it work one lo-fi, heartfelt track at a time.
Listen to the interview above and then check out the videos.
