Recent music reviews & album reviews by Any Decent Music

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16 April 2024

Here's how it works: The Recent Releases chart brings together critical reaction to new albums from more than 50 sources worldwide. It's updated daily. Albums qualify with 5 reviews, and drop out after 6 weeks into the longer timespan charts.

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The National's High Violet wins the first ever ADM Readers' All Time Poll

The AnyDecentMusic Readers’ All Time Poll

When it comes to divisions between music critics and music fans, it would appear from a quick analysis of the upper echelons of our readers' poll that one thing is clear: music fans lean more towards indie rock at the expense of any other style.

Hip hop, neo soul and R&B in the shape of Kendrick Lamar, D'Angelo and Frank Ocean rule the roost at Nos 1,2,3 in our critics' all-time ratings. In your poll, they slip a fair way down the rankings, as indeed do folk specialist Anaïs Mitchell, post-metallists Deafheaven, veteran shoegazers My Bloody Valentine and punk trio Sleater-Kinney.

Rising to fill their places are alt and indie rock favourites such as The National, PJ Harvey, Arcade Fire and The War On Drugs and alt pop artists such as St Vincent and Vampire Weekend.

The most striking deviation between the two sets of ratings is at the very top: your clear winner, The National's High Violet, is a relatively lowly 53rd in the critics' chart.

Unlikely bedfellows Kanye West and Sufjan Stevens are the two artists who have maintained lofty positions across both whereas Ry Cooder and Mbongwana Star have disappeared from view.