Review Summary: hipster music minus hipster bullshit
Hemingway could be a stuck-up wanker at times but at least he kept it short. Hemingway’s characters didn’t ramble on about their feelings. His narration didn’t go on showy philosophical tangents. Instead, he banked on the universal pairing of clipped language and suppressed emotion; when someone close to us says “I feel fine,” we all know that they don’t.
Singer-songwriter Greta Kline is an inheritor of Hemingway’s talent and Zentropy is her masterwork. Free of the cutesiness or masturbatory ‘wit’ that damns similar lo-fi indie rock artists, Kline and her backing band – AKA Frankie Cosmos – demonstrate remarkable agility across the record’s 17 minutes. The songs leap seamlessly between different tempos and arrangements before any one musical idea turns stale; Kline ricochets from hope to despair over the course of a lyrical phrase. The simple language anchoring each track ranges from intimate (“meet me at the pier/cigarettes and beer…Germany takes you from me”) to wry (“art school makes you wild/real school makes you wanna get high”) to devastating (“I love my brother Owen, though I do not know him”).
Filling in the gaps with warm guitar tones and friendly, simplistic drum beats, Zentropy is essentially a pop record stripped to its functional core. There’s no half-baked interlude or half-assed instrumental performance to be found here. It’s true that Zentropy is sometime adorable. It would serve any thrift-store speaker system well. But it’s also an ultra-focused, highly enjoyable piece of art that’s 100% muscle. Hemingway would be proud.
