Five Albums for Spring Rebirth
Whether that means quiet reflection or reemerging from winter with a vengeance
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.
By some coincidence of the release calendar—or perhaps the moods of our editors—this week’s entry is full of records by musicians taking bold steps outside of their usual realms. That feels appropriate for this week, with the first day of spring (and our first party!) coming on Thursday. It’s a time for rebirth, new energy, transformation, and these albums all embody those ideas, albeit in starkly different ways. We’ve got an IDM adventurer making sunlit ambient music, two different intimate songwriter records from rockers best known for more flashy or boisterous affairs, an experimental music lifer going full goth-rave queen, and more.