In her songs — maybe also in her life — Greta Simone Kline, 21, who records and performs as Frankie Cosmos, doesn’t waste time.
“Zentropy,” Kline’s debut album for Double Double Whammy, is a patchwork of short koans about discrete life moments and emotional responses, with a minimum of aural processing and just enough backing instruments to sketch out chords and beats. The whole album lasts only 17 minutes.
“I guess I don’t really like formulaic songs that are longer than they need to be,” Kline says. “Sometimes I feel like I have a shorter story to tell.”
Frankie Cosmos performs at the Space in Hamden on Monday, Nov. 9, with All Dogs and Cool Dads opening.
“Zentropy” isn’t your standard verse-chorus-bridge-repeat fare.
“This is the diagnosis: I can’t focus,” Kline sings on “School,” the sublime, two-minute opener, over a two-chord vamp, “and I can’t keep up because I’m always running away.” “My daddy is a fireman,” she sings later — a theme she returns to in “Fireman”: “He is brave and strong / today he is here / tomorrow he’s gone.”
(In real life, Kline’s father is actor Kevin Kline. Her mother is actress Phoebe Cates.)
Before Frankie Cosmos, Kline recorded as Ingrid Superstar. She acted in the 2001 film “The Anniversary Party” and later in Noah Baumbach’s “The Squid and the Whale,” from 2005. Aaron Maine, of the indie rock band Porches, is Kline’s companion and collaborator; live, he plays drums behind her, and she once played bass for Porches.
Kline’s early songs were solitary exercises.
“I didn’t really start showing [my songs] to people until I was 17, and then it was kind of a collaborative thing with a few people,” Kline says. “It became my diary to some extent. I was pretty interested in the archival aspect of it, of having these moments of my life organized by songs and ideas and time periods.”
When Kline started performing, her songwriting began to look outward.
“I know that when songs are complete, and I turn them into the band and into a record, they are going to be heard and scrutinized. The way that I deal with the personal part of it has changed. Now I’m writing a lot more fictionalized things because of the fear of putting emotions out there when you know you’re being listened to. I’m trying not to let that affect the songwriting too much, but it definitely has changed.”
Kline is also learning about the real ways that people release music: the time frames, having to hold onto songs and “questioning which ones actually deserve to be put out.”
On Nov. 13, Frankie Cosmos releases “Fit Me In,” a new 4-song EP on Bayonet Records, recorded at Kline’s house over a period of two years.
“Young,” the second song, was the catalyst. “I wrote it and wanted it to sound really poppy,” Kline says. “We started messing around and making it sound electronic. It’s a super-different sound than anything else I’ve ever made. It was really just a fun experiment.”
“Sand,” which lasts all of 49 seconds, is already streaming on Pitchfork. “It’s actually the last song on the EP, and it’s after a bunch of two- or three-minute songs,” Kline says. “It’s like a punctuation mark. It’s the last song we recorded, and I just wanted it to be this little tiny chapter to cap it off.”
Kline was inspired by “69 Love Songs,” a three-volume work from 1999 by the Magnetic Fields. “I feel like they have a lot of those little, tiny romance stories, which I thought was cool and wanted to emulate,” she says.
At the same time they were working on “Fit Me In,” Kline and Maine completed a full-length Frankie Cosmos album, to be released in the spring. The sound, Kline says, is “way more rock-band, full-band, recorded really differently.”
Kline’s upcoming appearance at the Space is part of a two-week stretch with only a single night off. Again: no wasted time.
“It’s definitely not the most intense tour I’ve done,” Kline says. “I love playing every night, especially on tour, because I feel like, what else are you going to do in some other place? Performing is definitely the fulfilling aspect of it, the part that keeps you going and keeps you happy.”
FRANKIE COSMOS performs at the Space in Hamden on Monday, Nov. 9, at 7:30 p.m., with All Dogs and Cool Dad opening. Tickets are $10. Information: manicproductions.org.
