catalogue

FRANKIE COSMOS

CLOSE IT QUIETLY (SUB POP)

FRANKIE COSMOS - CLOSE IT QUIETLY 134476
format:
1 LP
release:
06.09.2019
label:
SUB POP
item ID:
134476
barcode:
0098787132014
Close It Quietly is a continual reframing of the known. It's like giving yourself a haircut or rearranging your room.

You know your hair. You know your room. Here's the same hair, the same room, seen again as something new.

Close It Quietly takes the trademark Frankie Cosmos micro-universe and upends it, spilling outwards into a swirl of referentiality that's a marked departure from earlier releases, imagining and reimagining motifs and sounds throughout the album.

The band's fourth studio release is a manifestation of their collaborative spirit: Greta Kline and longtime bandmates Lauren Martin (synth), Luke Pyenson (drums), and Alex Bailey (bass) luxuriated in studio time with Gabe Wax, who engineered and co-produced the record with the band.

Recording close to home- at Brooklyn's Figure 8 Studios- grounded the band, and their process was enriched by working closely with Wax, whose intuition and attention to detail made the familiar unfamiliar and allowed the band to reshape their own contexts.

On opener "Moonsea," an unaccompanied Greta begins, "The world is crumbling and I don't have much to say." Take that as a wink and a metonym for the whole album, as her signature vocals are joined by Alex's ascending bassline and Lauren's eddying synths, invoking a loungey take on Broadcast or Stereolab's space-disco experimental pop.

There's much more than "not much" to say here, and it's augmented and expanded by experimentation with synth patches, textures, and other recording nuances courtesy of Wax.

As the lineup has solidified into the most permanent expression of full-band Frankie Cosmos, the bandmates have felt more comfortable deviating from their default instruments and contributing bigger-picture ideas to continue pushing the sound forward.

The band's closeness and aesthetic consistency freed its members to take more risks, notes Luke: "Everything will sound like Frankie Cosmos because Greta has such a distinct voice (literally and figuratively).

We have so much latitude to experiment with the instrumental music, and this time around we really took advantage of that."
 
  • Tracklisting
  • 1.1. MOONSEA
  • 1.2. COSMIC SHOP
  • 1.3. 41ST
  • 1.4. SO BLUE
  • 1.5. A JOKE
  • 1.6. RINGS (ON A TREE)
  • 1.7. ACTIN' WEIRD
  • 1.8. WINDOWS
  • 1.9. NEVER WOULD
  • 1.10. SELF-DESTRUCT
  • 1.11. WANNAGO
  • 1.12. I'M IT
  • 1.13. TRUNK OF A TREE
  • 1.14. LAST SEASON'S TEXTURES
  • 1.15. EVEN THOUGH I KNEW
  • 1.16. UFO
  • 1.17. MARBLES
  • 1.18. DID YOU FIND
  • 1.19. A HIT
  • 1.20. WITH GREAT PURPOSE
  • 1.21. THIS SWIRLING