Frankie Cosmos - Different Talking (2025) (Hi-Res)

Over the past decade, Greta Kline has expanded her solo musical alter ego Frankie Cosmos to a full band and, with her sixth album, developed a style and sound that retains the intimate bedroom-pop quality of her beginnings but is also fuller, richer, bigger. While Kline is the chief songwriter on Different Talking, it's a group effort—to the point that there are no external producers. Bassist Alex Bailey, drummer Hugo Stanley and keyboardist Katie Von Schleicher understand Kline's mission and don't push the songs to be something they're inherently not.

Clocking in at just over a half hour for 17 tracks, the songs on Different Talking feel like sketches and fragments, but are satisfying nonetheless. ("Not Long" lives up to its name, coming in at 1:36.) Surprisingly muscular "Margareta" has a confident, chugging groove reminiscent of Brad Wood's bass work on Liz Phair's Exile in Guyville. "Your Take On" picks up the pace with a garage guitar snarl and punchy drums. "Bitch Heart" drifts in gently and builds to a crescendo—as much as a Frankie Cosmos song can—with bass and drums stalking behind Kline and her evocative imagery: "I'm watching the goosebumps retract/ Watch the hair fall flat/ Against my skin," she sings, dragging out the hard-edge last syllable of the line "It can be such a fuckerrrrr." At 31, Kline has said she's figuring out her next era of adulthood via songs like "One! Grey! Hair!" (which has a pleasing bubblegum snap to it). Burbling "Vanity" was written during a long New York City walk in which she was "speaking directly to the universe and pleading to be considered by it," Kline has said. "It feels like it encompasses this push and pull between adult and kid, government and governed, planet and blade of grass." It also features a neat call-and-response between Kline and herself: "I know, I know," she sings before assuring, "I know you know." But she's more indecisive on chiming "One of Each": "I still don't know what I want/ I'll take one of each." There's still a tweeness to Kline's work, but it's rarely cloying. Short and sweet "Pressed Flower" is a sunny country ramble. "Porcelain" evokes a retro stroll where you can practically hear her twirling a parasol. Sung in a slightly lower, deeper register, "Pothole" settles into free-wheeling rhythm. And the melancholy shuffle of "Against the Grain" suggests Kline may have been an influence on Clairo's early records. © Shelly Ridenour

Tracklist
1. Pressed Flower (1:58)
2. One of Each (1:56)
3. Against the Grain (2:25)
4. Bitch Heart (2:25)
5. Porcelain (2:43)
6. One! Grey! Hair! (2:01)
7. Vanity (2:33)
8. Not Long (1:36)
9. Margareta (2:08)
10. Your Take On (2:00)
11. High Five Handshake (2:47)
12. You Become (2:46)
13. Joyride (2:27)
14. Tomorrow (2:28)
15. Wonderland (2:06)
16. Life Back (1:38)
17. Pothole (1:56)