Frankie Cosmos "Different Talking" LP (Loser Edition Red Vinyl)

Different Talking, the sixth and, so far, best album by NYC indie-rock
four-piece Frankie Cosmos, seems to exist across time and space, as we all
kind of do. It’s a collection of fragments and memories, remembered places,
and reinterpreted feelings that adds up to a lucent, humming whole: a sturdy,
worldly indie-rock record about aging and the passage of time that
nonetheless manages to feel sharply current.

Frankie Cosmos’ lead singer, guitarist, and songwriter Greta Kline has long
been heralded as one of contemporary indie music’s most deft and most
necessary writers, but on Different Talking, her lyrics soften out slightly, the
wry cynicism that defined recent records now giving way to an
acknowledgment of the awesome, and necessary, fallibility of the human
brain and heart.

To classify Different Talking as a return to form, or at least a return to the lush
directness of earlier Frankie Cosmos records, would be rude but also wholly
incorrect: as Different Talking makes clear, you can never return to the
comfort and bravery of your early twenties, but that person always kind of
lives inside you, no matter how much you change. Different Talking is about
finding that person, honoring them, and learning from them. “A lot of the
album is about being grown up and figuring out how to know yourself – like,
‘What is moving on?’” says Kline. “How do we move on when we’re addicted
to a cycle of haunting our own past? Writing songs is just the way through that.”
Kline has been a fixture of the American indie underground since her late
teens when her prolific Bandcamp releases and 2014 indie-label debut
Zentropy led her to be dubbed “the poet laureate of New York City DIY.” A tag
like that is a lot for young shoulders to take on, but it’s hard to deny the
singular influence she has had on contemporary pop music. If the idea of a
young woman picking up a synth in her bedroom, putting a couple of songs on
the internet, and quickly becoming a superstar is now de rigeur, it’s because
Kline and her peers normalized and exalted (female) DIY genius long before
they were pinned to moodboards in major-label marketing oces.

One of New York City’s most in-demand guitarists, over the past decade, Halvorson has worked with such diverse musicians as Tim Berne, Anthony Braxton, Taylor Ho Bynum, John Dieterich, Trevor Dunn, Bill Frisell, Ingrid Laubrock, Jason Moran, Joe Morris, Tom Rainey, Jessica Pavone, Tomeka Reid, Marc Ribot, and John Zorn. She is also part of several collaborative projects, most notably the longstanding trio Thumbscrew with Michael Formanek on bass and Tomas Fujiwara on drums.

A lot has changed since then: after going through a handful of different permutations over the past decade, Frankie Cosmos is now a four-piece featuring Kline, Alex Bailey, Katie Von Schleicher, and Hugo Stanley. Kline is the only constant, but Stanley, Bailey, and Von Schleicher are crucial collaborators, and to use the names “Greta Kline” and “Frankie Cosmos” interchangeably would be incorrect. Kline remains the primary songwriter, and the music on Different Talking is arranged by the band as a whole, but this is the first album to be self-tracked and self-produced by the band. Not coincidentally, it feels like a purer, more distilled take. “It does feel like the best version of what I’ve wanted to make since I was a teenager,” says Kline. “Although this was recorded in a living room, it’s as high fidelity as anything we’ve made in the studio.”

Track List: 

1. Pressed Flower
2. One of Each
3. Against the Grain
4. Bitch Heart
5. Porcelain
6. One! Grey! Hair!
7. Vanity
8. Not Long
9. Margareta
10. Your Take On
11. High Five Handshake
12. You Become
13. Joyride
14. Tomorrow
15. Wonderland
16. Life Back
17. Pothole