Following the release of 2019's Close It Quietly -- Frankie Cosmos' second album for Sub Pop and second as an official four-piece -- the COVID-19 pandemic found bandleader Greta Kline sheltering in place with her parents in Upstate New York. She didn't meet up with her band again for nearly 500 days, during the span of which Kline penned around 100 songs. Several of the 15 that made the cut for third Sub Pop outing Inner World Peace are steeped in uncertainty about the future, including some that directly address life as a ...
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Following the release of 2019's Close It Quietly -- Frankie Cosmos' second album for Sub Pop and second as an official four-piece -- the COVID-19 pandemic found bandleader Greta Kline sheltering in place with her parents in Upstate New York. She didn't meet up with her band again for nearly 500 days, during the span of which Kline penned around 100 songs. Several of the 15 that made the cut for third Sub Pop outing Inner World Peace are steeped in uncertainty about the future, including some that directly address life as a musician. Driving rocker "Magnetic Personality," for instance, includes the lines "I don't still play the guitar every day/Ask me how I am/And I won't really say." Elsewhere, she reassures herself on "Empty Head" that "It's okay not to sing a song about everything all the time," while "Spare the Guitar" calmly prophesizes her own death. Recorded in Brooklyn with co-producers Katie Von Schleicher and Nate Mendelsohn, Inner World Peace is also daunted musically, with conspicuous psychedelic and '70s pop/rock influences that, while perhaps not unprecedented in the project's prolific catalog, have never as thoroughly defined the tone of an album. The warped guitar pitches, strutting bass, and spacey keys of "Aftershook," for example, set a Halloween-friendly mood between brisker segments of punchy indie pop. "F.O.O.F." ("freak out on Friday") seems to bridge modern guitar pop, prog rock, and retro sunshine pop thanks in part to its lilting double-tracked lead vocal, fuzzy guitar tones, and breezy backing vocals. With the exception of the over-five-minute, tempo-shifting "Empty Head," the songs here are still short and bittersweet and still distinctly Frankie Cosmos, but there's a little less bounce in their gait and more weight to them on the whole, as Kline negotiates self-examination, affection, regret, and apprehension. As she sings on the reflective "Street View," "I was making such progress/Now there's new stuff to process." ~ Marcy Donelson, Rovi
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