The Minor Nobility of Just Messing Around
A Yale professor and ‘One Battle After Another’ star makes his cheeky debut. Plus pop from the Tehrangeles diaspora, the new Tame Impala, and more.
Welcome to the latest installment of Five Albums, the weekly feature for paid Hearing Things subscribers in which we discuss a handful of new records catching our attention. As music journalists, the question we get most often from friends is how to stay on top of what’s happening now. This is our attempt to provide a practical answer.
This week’s album recs include an underground rapper and famous producer swinging for the fences, a Yale professor wilding out on his opus debut, and a self-assured songwriter leaving room for sumptuous ambiguity. But also, can we just note the cover art for a sec? I love how each one projects a certain fantasy or dreamstate about a certain moment in time and the music therein, whether the Nagel-inspired illustration for Tehrangeles Pop or the wistful idyll of the Tame Impala photograph.
