Frankie Cosmos
-NIGHT AND DAY CAFE, MANCHESTER-
New Yorker Frankie Cosmos (or Greta Kline, to give her her given name), is nothing if not prolific. Since 2014 she’s released four albums and two EPs, with two of those albums and one of those EPs coming within the last year. It’s not just the volume of albums either; across those two recently released albums there’s a total of 39 songs (and another 4 on the EP) – she has music tumbling out of her at a rate of knots. If you go back to her Ingrid Superstar days, you’ll find an absolute treasure trove of releases across Bandcamp too. If she and Car Seat Headrest combined their output across the last 6 or 7 years or so, you’d have enough music to see you through about a year’s worth of listening I reckon. Tonight she’s playing Night & Day with her impossibly young looking band, and she seems pretty determined to give us as many songs as possible across her hour long set.
I say hour long, it’s more like an hour and 20 mins as an unfortunate keyboard issue after the first song puts the set on hold for about 15 mins whilst they try and fix it (“it’ll be a lot better with the keyboard, I promise,” she tells us, before inviting questions from the crowd to fill the slightly awkward pause). When the keyboard finally squeaks a noise out, the crowd show their appreciation and from here on in she and the band tear into their catalogue at breakneck speed. It’s genuinely hard to keep up with which songs they are performing – I think I count around 25 in total, but that could be way off the mark. Here to promote their latest release Close It Quietly, a wonderful coming-of-age album stuffed with perfectly formed mini-indie stories, we get a great deal of its 21 tracks with highlights including the brilliant ‘Even Though I Knew’, all teen-movie soundtrack jangly guitars and an ear worm of a melody; ‘Rings (On a Tree)’ with its tale of a break up and its perfect kiss off of “how I wish we’d never met”; and an absolutely perfect one-two of solo songs ‘Marbles’ and ‘Self Destruct’, two rare moments of calm amongst the chaotic tear-through of all the other full band songs.
‘Marbles’ in particular is a stunner, Kline wrestling with herself until she releases “I’m a lover/I give light/I was never meant to fight/Oh darling, I want to give you all my marbles” over a gorgeous gently plucked guitar line. Of course, with such an extensive catalogue you’re never going to hear your absolute favourites but the band delve into all their albums, and some songs that I don’t recognise (quite possibly from the extensive Bandcamp years?). Songs from last years’ Vessel fit seamlessly into the newer songs (I guess last years’ songs are still new songs?!), ‘Jesse’ being a particular standout. Overall I reckon a bit more space between songs would have been welcome, as sometimes it was hard to discern what was being played such was the sheer volume of tracks (I was scared to go to the toilet for fear of missing four songs or something), but fair play, you can’t accuse them of not giving value for money tonight.
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