Words: Garrin Faturrahman
Photo: Pooneh Ghana

If “Zentropy” or “Fool” reminded you of the brighter, early-YouTube-recco’ed indie pop days (or even Joyland Fest 2019), then you’re probably not alone, as there are a couple of local indie pop units who’d sing to your tune—which goes to show just how profound the effects of Frankie Cosmos have on the local scene.

To further prove said point, we’ve gathered three bands that would share a palette with Greta Kline’s shades. From deep cuts of Frankie Cosmos’ earlier days, melody-making tips, to their upcoming album, Different Talking, we managed to get a couple of eye-opening fun facts and laughs from Greta herself.

Farisha Aqilah (Chicha)
Puff Punch

There’s 2 versions of ‘Being Alive’ available. When you were writing the song, did you already imagine it the way one of the versions turned out? Which version was closest to what you’ve initially envisioned? 

That’s a great question. I didn’t imagine it ever in the full band way, so I put out the demo version of it, and I figured that the song was done, and then a few years later, it was requested by an audience member at a show, and I turned to my band and I said, ‘Do you want to try and just back me up on this?’

I don’t know if we played it at that moment, but I said, ‘That’s a great idea!’ I think I played it solo for the person that requested it, and then I thought ‘We should make a band version of it.’ And so then it sort of had a whole second style when we worked on it with the full band arrangement, and then we liked it so much that we put it on a record with new songs.

So, yeah, it was just because an audience member requested it, and then my band, they heard me play it solo, and they liked it. They said that could be, that could be cool to play on.

What gig was that?

It was just our own show, I think it was in Toronto at the Smiling Buddha, and it was in 2015, we were on a tour.

I just remember somebody shouting it out, and I played it solo and, and I remember, I think Luke Pyenson, my drummer at the time, was like, ‘Oh, that would be fun to make that.’ He’s like, ‘That’s a cool song. I’ve never heard that.’

 

Hi mom! I’m bein healthy! We are playin in TORONTO tonight at Smiling Buddha. Gonna actually rock myself pic.twitter.com/bYUkeUwhyA

— frankie cosmos (@frankiecosmos) November 14, 2015

It was a deep cut that the person was shouting out. It was a surprise kind of request. And normally, I don’t really take requests unless the band, like, knows how to play something. But I thought, oh yeah, that’s kind of a cool song.

After a handful of releases, from Much ado About Fucking (2012) until your upcoming album Different Talking, how has your approach to songwriting, music production, or writing in general changed since you first started making music?

I feel like, learning how to record and production stuff has just been a process where I learn by doing it. There’s a huge learning curve, you know? You learn as much as you can first. However, many years that you’re figuring out recording, and then from there, it’s just… there’s always more to learn.

I learn more about recording every time I make something, but I think recording with a band is a really different process, and something that I’ve just continued to figure out how to do and how I like to do it. When I started making albums with the band, it first felt very much like we were just trying to (or I just wanted to capture) how we sounded live—basically bringing our live set to a studio and trying to just press record on it, and everybody played at the same time.

And I think learning how to arrange for recording as opposed to arranging for live is different, but even my demo stuff that she’s talking about, like, I was recording as part of a writing process. I was writing while I was recording and using recording as a tool to write. So I think something that’s changed a lot is that I have figured out that I have more of a plan for how it’s going to sound before I start recording. And because of my bandmates, I’ve been able to achieve sounds that I was never able to do at home. Sometimes the song changes in a way you don’t expect once you’re recording it.

So I think it’s the same, whether you’re recording at home or in a studio or with other people or by yourself. It’s all a learning experience.

As a proud New Yorker, you’ve been showing your love for the DIY New York music scene, and how it’s been formative for your music and sound. In what ways can a city influence your creative outlook and do you think you’d have a different approach to music if you’re born and raised in a different city?

Yeah, totally. The main influence of a city is the people in it and the culture that the people are creating. So, I was very lucky to find an artistic community in New York, and I think there’s lots of people growing up in New York who might go their whole life not knowing about a DIY music community in New York. So you can have completely varied experiences within the same city, but I’m sure I would have had a different one if I were somewhere else.

Even in New York now, the only places that you can play music are places that sell alcohol, and so you have to be over 21 to go there, and I think that makes it really hard for young people to access music and the music community. When I was a teenager, there were a lot more punk places that were not legitimate venues where people were just putting on shows, and anybody could come and there was no bar, there was no alcohol sales needed. It was just like a house, or it’s a yard, or whatever, and people are putting on a show. So I think what influenced me the most about New York was the people that were committed to making music happen in a way that was accessible to people of all ages and wanting to help each other. 

I think what I like about people that I know who come from DIY music communities is that it’s sort of implied that we help each other out and like, ‘Oh, you broke a guitar string, here’s my guitar for the rest of the show,’ you know? Feeling supported, we go see each other play and help sell merch, or help run the door of the show if there’s nobody who can do it. Just sort of offering yourself up as part of the system that makes everything run, and running it yourselves without needing to, you know, be like a legitimate operation.

I think that was a huge influence on me, and it was just thanks to the handful of people that were really committed to making DIY shows happen as safely as possible and as welcoming as possible. So I’m sure I would have had a really different experience, and probably a much more solitary one if I were in any other place where I didn’t find that.

But I also think anybody can build that—you can be that person that makes community happen. When I was first making music, I definitely didn’t feel like I was part of that scene as a musician. I felt more like I was part of it as an audience member and as a person behind the scenes, helping run shows. The step from being a consumer of music and a creator of music in that community was actually not so easy.

Actually, I felt that when I was in Jakarta for Joyland Festival 2019. I remember meeting somebody that, like, had a label and there was so they gave me a bunch of, like, DIY bands’ CDs and stuff. And I was like, ‘Oh, wow. Indonesia seems to have a whole DIY world that people are excited about.’

You have been very DIY in your music making approach, do you have any tips on how a band can make the most of what they have, especially when they’re just figuring things around a production on their own without any guidance?

I think just trying things and trusting each other and what feels good in terms of playing music. So if it doesn’t feel good to be recording in a certain way, try something else. Everybody’s got their own way that they like to do it.

I like to do the drums and the bass at the same time if we can, and start there and then build everything else around that. Some people like to record to a metronome and do the drums last and have the drummer play to it. It just depends on what you like, and so much of it is just trying things and figuring out what you like. And if you try something and you don’t like it, that’s also a really good learning experience, because that’s how I know how I don’t want to do it. It’s just about experiencing it as much as you can, and being around musicians that you want to experience it with.

Dhi Adjeng Widyasti
Rrag

Which song came first during the writing process on Different Talking?

The answer is track 14, ‘Tomorrow,’ which I wrote in 2015. That was like the oldest one that made it onto the record. Everything else is from the last like three years. So that one’s kind of an outlier.

⁠If Different Talking was a breakfast cereal, what kind of weird—but emotional—flavor would it be?

It would be like cinnamon flavor, because it’s sweet, and you want to have it every day, but it’s also kind of complex. And if you think about it, it’s more interesting than, like, a super plain cereal, but maybe it reminds you of your childhood. There’s something wistful about it that it takes you back to some flavor of your youth.

Is there a track that changed a lot from demo to final version?

I feel like the one that changed the most is probably ‘Bitch Heart.’

I think that one felt really like the band arrangement was really out there, and we tried a lot of stuff, and it felt like it became very different in vibe from my solo demo of it.

What is the weirdest sound hidden in “Different Talking”?

Ooh, there’s some interesting weird sounds. I think there’s a weird sound in ‘Vanity.’ There’s a couple weird sounds that I really like—there’s this guitar tone that has the attack kind of backwards, so it’s like it’s getting louder as it rings out. And I think that tone is really cool and weird rhythmically.

Also ‘Vanity’ has that space echo that’s kind of getting big during the drum break moment, like two-thirds of the way through. And I think that that sound has always made me really happy. When we’re playing it, it always feels like I’m like in the matrix or something. It just feels like everything becomes slow motion, and it’s, it’s just a cool moment.

Amira Nauli (Mirakei)
starrducc

Frankie Cosmos has been one of the sonic references for my band, starrducc. It makes me curious, do you ever listen to music with non-English lyrics in your daily life? What draws you to those songs, even if you don’t fully understand the words?

I definitely have, but I would say I don’t regularly listen to music like that, although I also just don’t really regularly listen to music that much in general—even in English.

But there was one record that I was really into for a period of time that was from Mali, and I think it was in French or some Mali dialect, but it was definitely not English. And I think I just was drawn to it because a friend of mine, randomly, sort of like, gave me the vinyl, you know, 10–15, years ago, and he said, like ‘This just reminded me of you, like, her vibe, the girl on the cover. And it’s just like this, completely different-from-me kind of music, but I just really like it.

So, yeah, I think it just takes somebody saying, ‘Hey, you would like this,’ and that would be how I would get drawn to it. I don’t necessarily need the music that I listen to to have lyrics that I understand. It’s more like you can feel the emotion in the words or the singing without knowing the words—though I would like to read a translation if I’m listening to something like that! Sometimes I’m like, ‘Oh, I guess I want to know what they’re saying!’

Do you feel like there’s a version of you that only exists inside your music—someone that even you don’t fully know outside of it?

Yes, that’s so well said. It’s not just that there’s a version of me, but there’s like a life and a world inside of music, and you can kind of escape real life by playing music, writing music, and listening to music. Music is another dimension, and the only way to sort of access it is by being in it. So, yeah, that’s an interesting way of saying it, that there’s another me.

⁠If your songs were another art form—say maybe a painting, a film, or a short story—how would you describe them? what would they look or feel like?

I feel like they might be like a comic strip. I like comics as an art form, and I like to keep my songs tight around an idea, like, as short and to the point, and a lot of them are kind of like holding a magnifying glass to a super small moment to find the universe in that. And I really like when comics do that, and just show you in three panels, a moment from someone’s life, but it’s got this, like, philosophical thing, like a Charlie Brown comic or something.

And I just think that I like that they can be expressive in this sort of indescribable way visually using color and pen and form and all that stuff, and then also there’s the words. So I think it’s similar to music in that way too. That there’s like the written word that you can just take, and translate like it’s a poem, or think about it in your brain. And then there’s the part that’s harder to, like, hold in your mind, taking in this kind of expressive, temporal thing.

Best comic—go!

There’s this artist, James Kochalka, that I really love, and he did a daily comic strip of his life, every day for maybe 10 years. It was like just four panels, and something that happened to him that day, each one wasn’t necessarily deep or saying anything specific, but then altogether, it’s like you archived 10 years of your life in this really interesting way.

And you can see that he has cats, and he has kids, and he gets married and all that—it’s this beautiful thing of life that is made up of small moments. So I feel like that comes to mind as a comic that is very important to me.

It was called American Elf, he drew himself with elf ears. He’s a musician too in, like, a punk band in the 90s. There’s always been like a comic and music crossover!

When it comes to songwriting, do you write lyrics first or music first or do they tend to come together? Has that changed for you over time?

I do both versions of it—melodies first, and then fill in the lyrics, or the other way around, but probably most commonly lyrics and melodies together.

But if you asked me that 10 years ago, I would’ve definitely said that I more often would start with lyrics and then turn them into a song. It felt a lot more like I wanted to write a poem and then turn the poem into a song. Now I think I’m more often thinking in melodies or like having a melody come to me with the words—changes all the time!

What’s the weirdest or most unexpected place you’ve gotten a lyric or melody idea?

Oh, man. I get them everywhere, in the weirdest worst places. I mean, they’re so often that I’m on the street and singing to myself and recording an idea, like, I’ve recorded voice memos of ideas in a museum, in the park, in bed while someone’s sleeping, I don’t know. 

The hard thing is when you have to just hold it in your head, and you can’t record. Sometimes I’m on the subway, I have an idea, and instead of voice recording it—because I’m embarrassed—I will try and write it down in my notebook in a way that I’ll remember it, like, kind of guess the actual notes using solfège or draw a keyboard and imagine where I think the notes are.

And then the rhythm too, I’m really bad at actually notating music so I’m not able to completely correctly translate it into staff but I can guess and then I can read that later.

Wait, how do you take note of… sounds??

 

 

Yeah, like, there’s people who write a melody like this, like a graph, ‘Oh, the note goes up, and then it goes down, and then it goes down further,’ but I mostly can kind of guess what the notes are like. I’ll do like 1-2-3-4-5, and I can notate that and then figure it out.