by Jess Makler (unslump.substack.com)
Frankie Cosmos’ sixth (and first entirely self-produced) album Different Talking offers a fresh take on memory, disappointment, and the trials and tribulations of growing up. The band’s latest is chock-full of Motorola Razr-worthy ringtone classics; nostalgia is a throughline as lead singer Greta Kline takes the listener through pages of her journal, noodles with her guitar and leaves the listener with fragments of memory to piece back together.
The NYC-based, Sub Pop-signed group composed of the four-piece of Greta Kline, Alex Bailey, Katie Von Schleicher, and Hugo Stanley hit familiar strides with witty lyrics and wistful reflections on what it feels like to live and love.
Different Talking was tracked to tape in a house in upstate New York that the band lived in for a month and a half, and their strength as a unit is evident. The record is so sharp it’s almost formulaic, but that’s not a problem when the formula is successful—we’ve come to expect and possibly take for granted the layered production and ease at which the group picks up after 2022’s impressive Inner World Peace.
Different Talking’s tracks fit nicely into the ether of anti-folk indie pop with an ode to 70’s chamber pop—think the Shangri-La’s or going for a ride in a VW bus. Classic rock guitar riffs feature more prominently on this record, rife with aphorisms like “Had a tote bag filled with other tote bags,” “My body rent goes up for my soul” (“One of Each”), and “by accident I ate your air pods” (“Porcelain”). Lead singles “Bitch Heart” and “Vanity” are stand outs on the record, and it’s impossible not to relate to the frustration of being ghosted or led on and the pain that follows. Frankie Cosmos is for the girl’s girls, and Different Talking is a release worth sinking your teeth into.