Frankie Rose - Hila Frankie Rose

New Frankie Rose album sees her channelling the nuanced darkness of later Coil, at times the pounding EBM production of Skinny Puppy and the near-spiritual alienness of Cocteau Twins.

Hila. A record about loss. What persists beyond the range of ordinary perception? The place mourning keeps returning to—not quite transcendence, not quite doubt. The edge of what we can see.

Frankie Rose has spent fifteen years building one of the most quietly distinctive bodies of work in American independent music. Bursting out of the shackles of her legacy on 2024’s Love As Projection, 2026’s Hila builds on the muscular, dance-ready songwriting and transcendent melodies to result in Rose’s most exploratory and affecting record of her career. Imbued with yearning melodies and brooding post-punk dynamics, Hila is Frankie Rose at her most impressionistic and expansive.

Self-produced at her home studio and featuring collaborations with drummer Justin Welch (Elastica, Lush), Hila was recorded following extensive touring with The Jesus and Mary Chain and Swervedriver. The result is the most confident, searching music Rose has produced; muscular in its production yet emotionally vulnerable in its diffracted neon glow.

A record informed by loss and the way grief mutates our senses, it’s fitting that Rose channels the nuanced darkness of later Coil, at times the pounding EBM production of Skinny Puppy and the near-spiritual alienness of Cocteau Twins. On Hila, the doors of perception are constantly melting, revealing the porous nature of the seen and unseen. The result is a synesthesia that flips the senses.

If Love As Projection was an outward-looking record embracing the world, Hila brings the dark cosmos into inner space. Rose’s love for '80s production and soaring melodies remain—they’re cornerstones of her craft after all—but there’s something more assured and gothic underneath the massive waves of sound.

Opener “Olo” shimmers into a pulsating, cinematic brooder, Rose’s vocal transcending and swan-diving between registers in the chorus breakdowns. First single “Can’t Be Wrong” serves as a transition from the optimistic pop of Rose’s previous album, introducing a thumping '80s funk rhythm track beneath the soaring vocal performance. The ebullient “Shadow Twin” is that song’s sibling, recalling major label-era Strawberry Switchblade melancholy mixed with Robin Guthrie’s twinkling guitar work.

Hila blossoms darkly from here, expanding into a glacial, widescreen sonic landscape. On “Rainman” and the title track, the listener is transported to a rain-soaked nocturnal cityscape filled with desire, moonlight cutting through blinds, intoxicating chasms without bounds. Rose’s use of saxophone and digital synthesis recalls the night music of The Blue Nile’s Hats or the more ambient end of Emeralds’ catalogue. Indeed, in the towering synthetic cello sounds that climb into the mind on Hila, there’s a distinct flavour of the instrumentals on David Bowie’s Low. This is music to play in the dark, to light the way a little—just enough to trick the senses.

Leading into the strobe-filled haze, single “Manifest” pounds forward with a massive industrial 4/4 beat and post-punk/goth musicality, an exercise in unlit ecstasy. For “Best Of Times”, the liberal saxophone passages feel like a suppressed Michael Mann soundtrack from the '80s, with Frankie Rose’s effortless, melodic vocal performance probing and searching for connection.

Navigating through the dry, iced landscape into a rising sun, closer “Velvet Refrain” flips the melancholy of the preceding passages. With a massive sound dripping with harmony, the clanging guitar and vocal duet feel like they’re soundtracking an unexpected happy ending after bouts of darkness.

"Her sound remains vast and yearning, with gut-punch drums pushing through explosions of colored powder; her voice is a chrome-plated sigh, and her agile melodies soar effortlessly." — Pitchfork (Best New Music)

"She achieves some serious cinematic grandeur." — Stereogum