Frankie Cosmos
Different Talking
SUB POP
At this point in her quietly consistent career, Greta Kline is pumping out roughly 15 to 20 songs per album like it’s child’s play. Although not quite as prolific as Robert Pollard or Ty Segall when it comes to cranking out albums, each Frankie Cosmos record is a twee behemoth packed with songs firmly rooted in K Records’ soil. Sixth album Different Talking finds Kline clicking in quickly with her band, currently composed of Alex Bailey, Katie Von Schleicher, and Hugo Stanley. No external studio producers were invited to the party this time, which lends this set of songs a DIY quality reminiscent of the early Frankie Cosmos demos. It’s an album that’s just as musically adventurous as the previous five, but digs into themes of adulthood with a wink and a couple of tearful goodbyes to past traumas.
Different Talking mixes the relaxed art-school rock vibes of 2019’s Close It Quietly and her 2014 debut Zentropy with the ranging and rambunctious bedroom-pop torrents she mastered on 2018’s Vessel and 2022’s Inner World Peace. Opening track “Pressed Flower” firms up many of the themes on Different Talking; Kline revisits painful memories, showcases reborn communities, and highlights that being older doesn’t necessarily mean being wiser. “One of Each” wafts in like a summer breeze with its slow-strummed guitar jam and infectious chorus. “Against the Grain” is just as reflective and relishes its slow-burning aesthetic. “Bitch Heart” craves connection—and not through a cell phone—as a sad-sack cloud of harmony and a drizzle of synths push the drums along.
“One! Grey! Hair!” and several tracks later on the record wrestle with aging and not being the same person you were in your college years. This is one of Different Talking’s most propulsive tracks, with some of Kline’s oddest lyrics since the early days—she sings about having one day left on her library book despite being only 42 percent on the way through it, while her reflexes are “shaking like playing whack-a-mole with scabies.” “Vanity” is a fitting comedown from the manic episode as she sings about being a statistic in someone’s fantasy.
The beats get squirrely on late-album tracks such as “Joyride,” “Wonderland,” and “Life Back,” as the world play and band lock into a groove and the Frankie-isms get more barbed. Part of the endearing part of any Frankie Cosmos album is the power of taking a bedroom, an apartment stoop, a pile of garbage, or an office desk and slowly telling a story about it in all its unvarnished glory. A perfect example of this is the final track, “Pothole,” which is a jangly, Rooney-esque beach rocker that isn’t afraid of doodling in between the lines. Even when Different Talking wavers, Frankie Cosmos maintains her lyrical and harmonic sincerity.
