Frankie Cosmos

On June 27th, Frankie Cosmos will release their latest long player, Different Talking, available on CD/LP/DSPs worldwide from Sub Pop.

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.

The current configuration of Frankie Cosmos features Greta 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 by the unit with no external studio producers.

Lyrically, Different Talking may be some of Kline’s most insular work, but musically, it’s the most varied and richly textured Frankie Cosmos album, filled with country-fried noodling and tassels of synth and imposing walls of sound. “We’d go to any length to get Greta’s songs right, and she’s generous with songs, so we have a lot of freedom to arrange them,” says Katie Von Schleicher. “It’s a rare talent to have, with rare freedom given, and the course hasn’t changed.”