“Sand” – Frankie Cosmos (with a little Patti Smith on the side)

Although I don’t wander around the East & West Village as much as I used to back in the day when I actually used to live down there, I still feel a happy connection to the place that’s devoid of any “back-in-the-day-before-the-[fill in the blank]-peeps-moved-in” attitude, so imagine my delight to have some moments revolving around two super-cool chicks who sit on either end of the generational seesaw.

Frankie Cosmos aka Greta Kline has been writing under her pseudonym since 2011 and infuses her short (like, seriously sometimes mega-short, only seconds long) poppy songs with lyrics that are really mini poems about her day-to-day, what she sees around her and general stream-of-Frankie thoughts. For instance, in “Sand,” which is on her soon-to-be-released EP Fit Me In she name-checks the Strand, a most fantastic, forever-around bookstore downtown that sits at the crossroads of new/old Manhattan. But you don’t need to be a New York City doyenne to wrap around the scenery in her songs, just someone who can appreciate a musician whose not afraid to play with sound and lyrics, rhythm and mood. While these four songs are a one-off experimental collaboration with Aaron Maine of Porches, who produced the songs using mostly electronic equipment in place of the live band instrumentation, she will have a full-length with the band out in 2016, so more chances to be let in to her world.

And speaking of peeking inside someone’s amazing world, having just finished M Train, Patti Smith‘s new book, I can say unequivocally that if given the chance to execute a little Being John Malkovich magic (pushing the button for the 7 1/2th floor, here) and spend some time inside this woman’s head, I would be there in a nanosecond. The way Patti Smith sees her surroundings and translates them for the rest of us is a wondrous ride. In honor of the 40th anniversary of Horses, a little visual flashback.

Good listening, good reading, a thread runs through it all!