Ahead of the release of Frankie Cosmos’ sixth studio album Different Talking, Greta Kline takes Kate Ratner on a trip down memory lane through the pivotal songs in her life.
Greta Kline has New York City flowing through her veins.
Whether traipsing through the streets of Brooklyn looking for house shows or befriending fellow musicians at her favorite venues, Kline’s home base lives at the core of her artistry. Music has always been a part of her life in New York, where she started playing guitar at an early age and, eventually, began recording and releasing songs on Bandcamp under the alias Ingrid Superstar.
In 2011, Kline parted ways with Ingrid and changed her stage name to Frankie Cosmos. What began as a solo act evolved into an indie project composed of Kline and her backing band, where her current collaborators are Katie Von Schleicher, Alex Bailey, and Hugo Stanley
Frankie Cosmos — an extension of Kline and her delicate lo-fi sound — released their first studio album Zentropy in 2014. Kline’s oeuvre chronicles over a decade’s worth of personal and professional growth, neatly packaged into light-hearted ditties and passionate rock songs. Between 2016 and 2022, Frankie Cosmos released four more records — Next Thing, Vessel, Close It Quietly, and Inner World Peace.
Since her early years of making music, Kline has been heavily influenced by other members of the New York indie scene. When she came across artists her age performing in the same basements and backyards as she did, Kline stopped to take a listen. Still, her “friends’ bands” — peers, mentors, and collaborators — are fixtures in her daily rotation and her Nine Songs selections.
This month, Frankie Cosmos will reintroduce themselves with Different Talking — their first entirely self-produced record. Different Talking is dedicated to the passing of time, a bittersweet feeling Kline has grown familiar with as she enters her thirties. With aging comes security and understanding, but also, the dread of moving on.
As Kline looks into the future, her New York City teen hood (and its musical soundtrack) remain a constant source of both inspiration and nostalgia. The bands she snuck into bars for, the artists she played alongside on tour, the records that bring tears to her eye, and the city that stood by her every step of the way.
For Kline, these Nine Songs represent a time capsule of her experience falling in love with music and growing up in her hometown. “When I was preparing for this, I read Catherine Cohen’s Nine Songs, and she was like, “Of course the songs that everyone picks are from their teen years”, she explains.
“That really potent time of listening to music. So, I was definitely aware that I was doing that, but I was also trying to branch out, a little bit!”
“Chiot” by Whatever, Dad
GRETA KLINE: This song is so special. I really wanted to put so many of my friends’ bands [in my Nine Songs] because I feel like they are such a big part of why I make music and how I started making music.
I wanted to put Whatever, Dad in because this song and that project is from such a specific time — 2013-ish — when a lot of my peers were making really rough recordings and putting them on Bandcamp. Benji Santos of Whatever, Dad is an amazing artist with so many projects. They were one of the first friends that I made through playing my own shows.
“Chiot” is a really beautiful recording. It's such a perfect home recording. And I love all of Benji’s musical inclinations, the harmonies and timing. It's such a very “felt” song and captures this little moment with all the little details. There are other people in this list who are friends, but I feel like this was the song that I chose to represent that specific time in my life of friends’ music.
BEST FIT: I love that the lyrics are a little quirky too. They are heartfelt but don’t take themselves too seriously.
Yes, “This bagel could be warmer.”
It could be!
“Let Clock Work” by The Beets
The Beets are NYC legends. I’ve been a fan of them since I was a teenager and I have a lot of memories of going to see The Beets at DIY spots in New York. They were a little older than me, but they were really nice to me because they knew my brother. It was this welcoming scene of people from New York making their special music. The Beets are sick.
Can you describe what a typical Beets show was like? What was the energy like in those DIY spots?
They were all so weird and special. They had this guy, Matthew Volz, who’s actually making us a music video right now, which I'm really excited about. Matthew makes all of Juan Wauters’ music videos. And he used to do, or I guess he still does, set design — backdrops for shows.
He would put a big flag behind Juan with a big painting with some comic on it or other imagery, with candles and lamps. Once I saw The Beets play and they had a couch on stage, really cool set design and a really intimate feel — like you’re in their house.
The Beets really pay attention to detail and bring you into the performance. I saw Juan recently, and we're actually playing together soon, but he'll run back and forth across the stage holding his guitar and run as fast as he can. And he’ll be throwing kisses into the audience, kind of Jonathan Richman-esque. He’s this silly and romantic kind of performer.
In New York, there were cool venues that were all ages, but there were also a lot of bars where you could see shows. I have a memory of being with my friend Sarah and going to see her guitar teacher’s band that we were fans of at CMJ.
We went in and it was 8pm when we got there, so we decided to go get pizza and come back. We asked at the door, “Can we come back with these stamps?”, and the bouncers said, “No problem.” We leave and we get back and they're like, “Oh, sorry, it's after 9pm. If you're underage and not already inside, you can’t come in.” It was a stupid rule. If we had stayed, we could be in there.
So we were wandering around Williamsburg, and we went into this cool DIY venue that we knew was an all-ages spot called Death By Audio. And as if by magic, The Beets were playing. I have this memory of being warmly welcomed by them. It was such a special, classic teenage night.
“Blue Driver” by Michael Hurley
Michael Hurley is this amazing, super weird folk artist who passed away recently. This whole record, Hi Fi Snock Uptown is just a perfect record, no skips. Hurley is this world builder kind of musician, and he paints his album art and makes comics.
I really love this record, and I have been coming back to it for my whole life. “Blue Driver” is a tale of a lonesome truck driver going through the night, and it ends with him getting pulled over. And he’s singing along to the sound of the siren.
Hurley was always doing weird sound effects with his voice, like trumpet sounds and siren sounds. And I think this is probably, without me realising it, something that I brought with me into making my own music. A lot of his music is the band following the vocals, the drums will be fluctuating in tempo, but it's because they're following this very fluid vocal and guitar performance. I think that's something that I really appreciate about Michael Hurley.
Do you have a favorite lyric from this song?
I mean, the whole thing is a perfect little capsule of a song. But the first lyric, “Blue, blue driver rolling along, searching the endless highway for a shoulder to cry on.” There are a lot of good highway metaphors, which I, of course, went on to rip off unknowingly.
I'm realising now that I've completely done the same thing [in "Schmuck In The Room”], where you're on the highway, you see a sign for a shoulder, and you're like, “Shoulder! That’s what I need!”
“Classic Quip” by Good Morning
Good Morning is my newest favorite band of the last couple years. They're so fucking good. They're also a band that has existed along the same timeline as me, making music from around the same time. They're my age, but they're Australian, so I'd never heard of them until 2023. But we went on this tour with them, where they played as a duo, opening for us and then that led to them hiring my whole band to be their band.
So then I was playing guitar in their backing band for a couple nights, and it was honestly life changing. I picked this song because this is one that I really liked playing guitar on. It's a really good song, and it captures this toxic male culture — something that I don't think there are a lot of songs about.
It felt really powerful to play alongside them, I think all three of us were playing guitar on it. They're really incredible musicians. I love all their records and production. They've played with lots of bandmates, but they take turns singing, so there are Liam songs and Stefan songs. I'm a huge fan of their body of work.
Tell me more about playing with Good Morning, as opposed to playing your songs with your band. Did it feel like a big switch or was it more of a natural transition?
I think playing with Good Morning was a monumental moment for me, because I hadn't performed with another band in a really long time. It's something I forgot that I love, and maybe something that I didn't even know that I love. It made me feel really good at guitar and they really accepted me as “one of the boys.” We had a really good vibe between my whole band and them. It's always really surprising to make new friends for life in your 30s.
I always feel solidarity with other people that are touring and making music. It's a weird lifestyle that we've all chosen, but they're special people who felt like family, and it felt really empowering to be trusted to play on their songs. It's so new for me to get to the end of a three-week tour and be like, “I don't want it to end.”
“How Sad, How Lovely” by Connie Converse
Connie Converse is, arguably, one of the first singer-songwriters, and her story is very long and winding. It involves a lot of feeling disappointed in herself and her career and trying to figure out what she's supposed to be doing.
My friend Emma gave me the How Sad, How Lovely CD when it first came out in 2011. Well, it came out in 2009, but I acquired it in 2011. I didn't have Spotify or anything, and I would put the CD on to go to sleep. So, the last five tracks of the album, I didn't know because I was always asleep. I only knew the first 10 songs really well because I would be awake. I've always revisited the record.
A friend of mine asked me to cover “How Sad, How Lovely” a few years ago for a project and it's such an intricate song. Connie Converse is so good at sounding simple, but it's actually a really beautiful composition that's making it sound so good.
I can't remember exactly what it is, but at the end there's a chord change and the vocal melody stays the same. It just sounds so different. There's this implied chord between the melody and the guitar, and it's really haunting. Such a haunting song.
“Stranger Sat By Me” by Lomelda
Lomelda put Hannah out in 2020, and I have a really strong memory of listening to this on repeat late at night at my parents’ kitchen table, just pressing play over and over again on the whole thing. I love Lomelda. We toured together a couple times in 2018, 2019, and she's one of my favorite musicians, producers and writers.
I really love the lyrics in this song. To me, it's such a good portrait of an anxiety attack, which is just suddenly feeling frozen and trying to reach out. I love that opening line, “I don't own it, songs are free.”
It felt like such a hug through the void of 2020 to receive this song. The whole record is beautiful, but this one is kind of smack in the middle of it, and it's such an arresting song.
“Girls' Room” by Liz Phair
I feel like the different Liz Phair eras hit you at different times. “Girls’ Room” is one of my earliest memories of listening to music.
My mom had Whitechocolatespaceegg on CD. We had two CDs in our car: Whitechocolatespaceegg and the Indigo Girls’ Retrospective. So those are super early memories of me and my mom in the car listening to music, and “Girls Room” was our song.
And then I got more into Liz Phair, obviously, later. I found Exile in Guyville and Girly-Sound — that all hit me in my 20s, but “Girls Room” is always going to be that first Liz Phair song for me. It’s so crazy to think about listening to it as a little kid, because it's kind of fucked up, the way all her songs are.
Just a tad.
To me it was like, “Girls Room! Sleepover!” I was just thinking of it from a little kid’s perspective.
“How Bizarre” by OMC
How bizarre!
How bizarre, how bizarre! I know this song is from the ‘90s, but I got addicted to it two years ago. I'm pretty sure the first time I heard it was probably the show Undeclared. After Freaks and Geeks, they tried to make a college version which only had one season.
It's actually really funny. There's an episode where the girl's college roommate gets addicted to listening to “How Bizarre,” and she's ready to kill her roommate because she has it on repeat. I remembered that deep in my psyche, and then I became that roommate about 10 years later.
It was 2024, I was moving, and I had COVID. I was packing up my whole life, wearing a mask while doing it, and feeling like shit. Part of what I believed to be a symptom of my COVID was that I became addicted to “How Bizarre.” It's such a good song. It's really so awesome, and it's so catchy.
It also has an amazing, mysterious lyrical story that nobody talks about. When I was really addicted to the song, I was texting the lyrics and my theories to my friends and being “Can't you see?”
Let’s hear the theories.
I think the lyrics are about being on the run, having done some kind of act of protest. My read is that they set all the animals free from the circus, and that's when the song starts. Then they get pulled over, and their hearts are racing. They're getting pulled over because they're people of colour in a racist state. And then, suddenly, the policeman just says, “Hey, is that a Chevy 69? How bizarre!” And they're all just like, “Oh my god, this was just a random guy who was pulling us over because he liked our car. Phew!”
And then they keep going, they get to the gas station, and they see the poster for the circus. And they're all like, “We just did that! We just set free all the animals, but no one knows yet!”
What do you think makes this song so catchy?
Apparently, the guitar lick in the beginning, that repeating sound, is something that Pauly Fuemana’s dad used to play on guitar. And when he got to the recording studio with the producer, he just instinctively played that on the guitar because it was something he’d heard his whole childhood. So, the fact that it became this huge hook is just so cool. And it makes the song so much fun to listen to.
“Solitaire” by Krill
I guess Whatever, Dad and Krill are the two friends’ bands that I chose to put in, from making friends through making music. We played a show where there was basically nobody there except for the bands, and that's how I met Krill. I was watching them, and they were watching me, and we traded CDs.
And then I had the Alam No Hris CD, the record that had “Solitaire” on it, in my car forever. I would play it for anybody that would listen, and we became friends through music and would host them when they came to town.
We played at their house in Boston and then a few years later, their drummer, who had moved to go to grad school and quit Krill, he moved back and became my drummer for like, eight years.
So, there was this cross connection between ourselves, and they always hold a special place in my heart. Krill forever!
Different Talking is released on 27 June via Sub Pop and is available to pre-order now.
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