1 July 2025
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.
Browse specific styles
The ex Mazzy Star singer-songwriter, with a laid-back solo album recorded in Ireland
6.6
With Sandoval playing the archetypal femme fatale here, the album easily ranks among her best work. And if that weren’t enough, Mazzy Star has reportedly nearly completed their long-anticipated fourth album. The drought, thankfully, appears to be over Read Review
This is music to lose yourself in during the long cold winter nights Read Review
This is music for stoners, drunks, the heartbroken, romantics and anyone who's found solace in The Velvet Underground's eponymous album at 3am when the ashtrays are overflowing and the drink has run out. Read Review
The utterly spare instrumentation-lightly plucked guitars, gently brushed drums, the occasional mournful fiddle-provides just enough formless shadow to make Sandoval's resonant whisper of a voice stand out Read Review
It's quiet, dramatic and harmonically narrow Read Review
There's a dense and inky depth beneath the surface gorgeousness to keep you entranced. Read Review
There's no real standout track - no ""Fade Into You"" for this decade - but it's a good listen while it lasts, a thing of slow, sad grace. Read Review
She purrs every song in slow motion — but given lyrics like ""We're like the roses/Stoned in the backyard,"" that's probably the point. Read Review
Print edition only
Minimal musical backing, hardly-there vocals and words that might mean something, but that’s not what they’re there for. Read Review
Hope Sandoval & the Warm Inventions: Through The Devil Softly
Loyle Carner hopefully!
The sounds are slightly different here than on previous albums and his tentative sojourn into singing is a success because his voice connects as easily as his rapping does Albumism
Lorde Virgin
Lorde trades in her secrecy and mystique for a tremendously healing, desperately relatable record that cements her mark as her generation’s defining artist Northern Transmissions
On the uncomfortable paths of the 28-year-old’s fourth album, slam-dunk bangers are substituted with reinvention and restraint surrendered through hushed, reflective, and carnal synth-pop vestiges Paste Magazine
The New Zealand pop star chips away to reveal her purest self on her fourth album NME
For Lorde, it's an opportunity to reclaim something she thought she had lost long ago, but has always been within her: her true self Exclaim
Frankie Cosmos Different Talking
Different Talking introduces some novel elements to the Frankie Cosmos sound, but despite that, their core identity remains intact Spectrum Culture
U.S. Girls Scratch It
Musically Scratch It will probably be the least memorable in U.S Girls’ discography and aside from ‘Like James Said’ and ‘Bookends‘, the relatively thrill-less album does sort of fly by unnoticeably, made worse by the weak closing track No Fruit God Is In The TV
Lorde may not break entirely new ground on fourth album Virgin, but its warmth and texture make it consistently compelling and quietly brilliant The Skinny
yeule Evangelic Girl Is A Gun
A sun-drenched pop album — perhaps the pop record of the summer Under The Radar
The album is a hesitant step in the right direction for the singer Slant Magazine
Virgin is Lorde at her best yet as an affective poet and, frustratingly, at her most tamed as a digital sound designer The Line Of Best Fit
The New York band’s sixth LP feels like a scaled-up team effort. The newly expansive sound suits Greta Kline’s hard-won self-knowledge Pitchfork
Lorde’s fourth album returns to the digital, physical sound of Melodrama. While rooted somewhat in her past, it’s a gritty, tender, and often transcendent ode to freedom and transformation Pitchfork
Her fourth album celebrates the messiness of being human – and is also her most compelling and revealing musicOMH
BC Camplight A Sober Conversation
It’s perhaps the finest release of his career from start to finish, and that’s beating some stiff competition Far Out
Since we've been around, that is. So, the highest-rated albums from the past twelve years or so. Rankings are calculated to two decimal places.
Kendrick Lamar To Pimp A Butterfly
Fiona Apple Fetch The Bolt Cutters
Spiritbox Tsunami Sea
Kendrick Lamar Damn.
D'Angelo And The Vanguard Black Messiah
Nick Cave And The Bad Seeds Ghosteen
Self Esteem Prioritise Pleasure
Bob Dylan Rough and Rowdy Ways
Nick Cave And The Bad Seeds Skeleton Tree
Frank Ocean Channel Orange