Frankie Cosmos - Different Talking Review
In their sixth, fully self-arranged album, Frankie Cosmos has created a thoughtful, lambent project that dusts off the top of the storage box and dives in.
Different Talking takes a key to your childhood locket necklace you could never outgrow, and fleshes out the microscopic photos you forgot laid inside. Frankie Cosmos, consisting of Greta Kline, Alex Bailey, Katie Von Schleicher, and Hugo Stanley take the time to curate a museum of memories, each track a ripple in time. Kline’s warm vocals stand as confidently as ever as she weaves the patchwork of what it’s like to grow up, and miss yourself; The self you thought was following close behind…
“Pressed Flower” starts the album out, seemingly a lighthearted track doused in a smiling beat and Kline’s sweet humming vocals; Yet it’s here we confront the first of many fragmented memories that make up the keepsafe that is Different Talking. Kline discovers she archives her love as she would book-press a flower, preserving its beauty and slashing its transience. “Against the Grain” adopts the duality of aging; Embodying growth and lusting for your past. Kline sings quietly “I used to get down, but now I really like to be alone”, establishing that with age, solitude becomes peace, but the noise of adolescence is also to be missed. She carries on about climbing the fence to reach the “shallow grave” on the other side, carrying the weight of her youth on her back to a place both reliant and envious of her childhood. Although cherry-picked with heavy topics, Different Talking’s poetics do not cloud the band's innate whistling warmth, as Kline stays true to her softness even in the face of rugged truth.
“Bitch Heart” feels like a reminiscent walk through Kline’s first bedroom. She sings over a probing melancholic synth “And I miss my shelf, with all my shit laid out// And I miss who I was”. There’s an admittance to missing the sort of “perfect disorder” that comes with childhood, when the mess doesn’t matter, and your thoughts can run freely; Perhaps Kline is mourning the loss of her inner child and the gain of her rugged, situated present self. The band makes a hard switch as Kline begins to sing about her desensitization that’s come along with adulthood. Kline sings “I’m watching the goosebumps retract, watch the hair fall flat against my skin”, remarking of the numbing qualities that come with life’s experiences, turning a throbbing heart stone cold.
We can feel Kline get playful with her aging doubts in track “One!Grey!Hair!” which whistles lightly about life’s fleeting nature. “Time is both frozen and moving faster than we can see” probes at the construct we seek infinite control over. But as Kline steadily draws the curtains to a close, “The idea of growing up doesn’t even cross my mind” sarcastically ensues. Different Talking sees Frankie Cosmos breezily parsing out the complexities and shoulder shrugs of
adulthood; Planning to phone a friend but instead you forget under the mountain of priorities you carry, or even stoically resting by the fire fixating on that one grey hair that stress grew.
“One of Each” sways in the soft rock wind with the endearing sentiment of childish indecisiveness. Kline sings with twiddling thumbs “I don’t know what to do, I, don’t know what to do” in mere circles as if on a spinning chair. Frankie Cosmos’ warm and sweet sonics change the course of Different Talking’s seemingly contemplative conversations from a place of existential doom to the tattered pages of a beloved photo album. The band makes space for you to feel like a child with the complexities of an adult. Kline shares her memories both grand and miniscule in such a way that makes the stretch of time between the memories feel a bit sweeter. She doesn’t allow time to rot her perception, or age to dull her recollection of what was. “Your Take On” skips through the record with an angsty electric guitar as Kline becomes self-aware of her villain-painting tendencies for past lovers gone wrong. With time also comes clarity, and Kline spiritedly chants about her own flaws in retrospective relations.
“I know myself even more” Kline sings in “Wonderland” where we can feel her more self assured than ever. From the larger, more pulsating topics of growing old and still remembering the little girl in the mirror, to recollecting that one person who made you feel a grain of sand amongst a dune, Frankie Cosmos has set out to create 17 tracks that are so gently subtle and paradoxically make growing old feel younger than ever. Kline knows herself, and we can begin to understand a more personal version of her through quiet rememberings and confident conclusions about who she once was and where she’s headed. This album is thoughtful, and grounding in a way that makes the road ahead feel a bit more feasible, Kline our living proof that you don’t have to let go of that child in you, you just carry her with you as you venture out.