It’s probably no coincidence that Sydney Elliott chose BACKBONE as the title of FRANK‘s second EP, a record about what keeps you standing when everything else falls apart. Following My Darkness Is Not Pitch Black (2025), the Indianapolis-based artist returns with five tracks co-written with Owen Thomas, who also handles production, and mixed by Geoff Swan. Musically, it moves between different styles of alternative rock, with the same backdrop throughout: broken relationships, the wounds they leave behind and how hard it is to put the pieces back together.
The EP opens with “In Limbo”, an unsettling mid-tempo track with dense, slightly gritty guitars, cold synths and vocals that slowly draw you in. It’s dark alternative rock with post-grunge echoes and a shadowy sensuality that recalls Meg Myers, telling the story of a relationship that has run its course but is hard to leave for fear of abandonment. There’s something menacing about it, yet the melody is beautiful.
“Steady Hands” kicks things up a gear. The bass takes the lead, with a post-punk, industrial pulse that picks up the pace considerably. There are synths, hard-hitting guitars, occasional vocal distortion and an almost punk energy that brings to mind the edgier side of Garbage. The lyrics explore the fear of failure and learning to trust yourself, even if that means making mistakes.
On “Walk On By”, FRANK shifts gears again, moving into slower alternative rock with touches of trip-hop and dream pop, while Elliott’s almost whispered vocals have a lot of Shirley Manson in them. A perfect tone for a song about unexpectedly running into an ex and choosing to keep walking. “Dust” leans even further into synths. It’s a slower, immersive indie pop-rock track with an accessible melody that contrasts with what it actually tells: a disturbing story of violence, silence and death. This is where the EP starts to make more sense: strength isn’t always something you find; sometimes it’s forged through pain.
The conceptual closing comes with “Canto V: Poem of Ashes”, a short piece of experimental art-rock somewhere between minimalist trip-hop and ambient pop, gradually building as it reflects on nature, ashes and the eternal return. As a bonus track, London DJ Samantha Togni revisits “Naturally”, the song that closed FRANK’s debut EP, and takes it into dark, danceable electronic territory. An unexpected encore that pulls you out of the trance and gets you dancing.
BACKBONE doesn’t sell resilience as a self-help slogan. Instead, it digs into its contradictions, with a sound that keeps changing and a voice that can be fragile and defiant in the same song. It starts in limbo and ends by accepting that nothing lasts forever: we are dust, and to dust we shall return, but even from the ashes, something new can grow.
Listen to BACKBONE in full here.
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