Album Review: "Zentropy"

Frankie Cosmos, “Zentropy” (Hunter Davidsohn, 2014)

Look no further; New York City has found its bedroom pop princess in the form of 19-year-old songstress Greta Kline and “Zentropy,” her first studio album under the name Frankie Cosmos, is her simple, yet shiny tiara.

Not the low hanging fruit of many self-released albums released these days; “Zentropy” is instead the shiny apple that asks politely to be picked. Kline manages to create something synonymous with young life and young love that seems to capture the cusp of adulthood with enough melancholy and charm to pass around.

“Zentropy” finds its footing in a way not totally unfamiliar to fans of Kline. Everything stays short, simplistic but never too sweet. This may be the first studio release for Frankie Cosmos but Kline plays by her own musical rules. The group’s Bandcamp page boasts over 40 albums, mostly garage band affairs, in an effort to constantly be making and releasing new music. In the few years that she has been putting herself out there in the music world, everything seems to have been leading up to “Zentropy’s” 10 songs in under 20 minutes—a carefully selected spread of Kline’s unwavering musical efforts and a healthy dose of girlish charm.

Opening with a tongue-in-cheek ode to the trials and tribulations of the educational system from a student’s perspective, “Art School” boasts lyrical gems like “All your friends are drunk and wild/ All my friends are depressed,” that showcase Kline’s rather honest sense of humor. It easily conjures up the image of a cramped house show with an overflowing bike rack outside and inside, a sea of heads with DIY haircuts singing along in agreement.

On the other hand, on the album’s longest track “Leonie,” clocking in at 2:27, Kline reverses her tactics and applies a thick layer of dark humor to her honest quips like “I’m bitter like olives/ That’s why you like them and I don’t.” She finishes up the number with a shift towards 1960’s beach pop strains, her real life boyfriend and collaborator, Aaron Maine crooning about enjoying cigarettes and beer on the end of a pier, mimicking the rollercoaster of youthful relationships.

Somewhat confusingly the hypothetical world of Frankie Cosmos, Kline’s adopted musical persona, often overlaps with Kline’s own realities. The real-life daughter of actor Kevin Kline, “Fireman” is written as a quick ditty about the bravery Kline sees in her father but for Frankie Cosmos, she sings “My daddy is a fireman/ He is brave / He is strong,” changing his profession, perhaps for the sake of gathering approval. After all, how many people classify acting as a brave career?

In a sea of self-reliant lo-fi indie tunes, Kline is sweetly unapologetic while she sings out her anxieties and troubles. The album’s heartbreaking closer, aptly named “Sad 2,” is a ballad with all emphasis on a dead dog—the dog in question being Kline’s former family pet Joe Joe, whose image graces the album’s cover decked out in a lime green bonnet. “I just want my dog back/ Is that too much to ask?/ I wish that/ I could kiss his paws” Kline warbles and wills anyone listening not to cry as they reach one hand out for a box of tissues and the other for their chosen listening devices so they can immediately press repeat.

This album stands as the musical equivalent of someone’s first college apartment, where everyone is ready to fall in love, shed a lot of tears, and cautiously avoid a noise complaint from the neighbors downstairs. Like that apartment, “Zentropy” is something that is hard to forget in the best way possible.