Hello and welcome to the latest installment of Five Albums, the weekly feature for paid Hearing Things subscribers in which we recommend you the new records from across genres that you need to hear. As music journalists, the question we get most often from friends is how to stay on top of what’s new and cool. This is our attempt to provide a practical answer.
By coincidence, this week’s Five Albums is really Two Albums and Three EPs. Dylan, Ryan, and Andy all happened to pick shorter-form collections, and each of them—a hip-hop producer’s soulful singing over his own beats, an American rapper’s dreamy and pensive European travelogue, and a London band’s bleakly atmospheric rock-electronic fusions—are good reminders that EPs can be little aesthetic universes of their own, not just places to collect outtakes, remixes, and the like. For full-lengths, we’ve got a wonderfully bubbly debut from a rising alt-pop star, and a onetime indie lightning rod mellowing out and finding a comfortable new stride. Let’s hit it.
