A 100-Year-Old Man's Debut Record

Hello and welcome to the latest installment of Five Albums, the feature for paid Hearing Things subscribers in which we recommend you the new records from across genres that you need to hear each week. 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. Five Albums is still a new-ish endeavor—we’re on issue three, but who’s counting—so if you have thoughts about how to make it more useful to you as a reader, we’d love to hear them.

This week, we’ve got records from across the generational spectrum: one from a band of indie rockers whose singer can’t legally drink; another from a space-jazz veteran who made his first solo album at 100 years old. (Never let that voice in your head tell you it’s too late to embark on a new creative pursuit.) There’s also a smoky unplugged set from a singer who generally works with futuristic synths, a grunge exorcism from a young polymath who seems capable of anything, and an underground rap beat tape that plays like the best kind of stoned late-night channel surfing.