2 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.
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Mark Ronson produced second album from London based indie pop soul band
6.4
The more sophisticated the music, the more boyishly excited the band sound to be playing it – a pleasure that proves infectious Read Review
Print edition only
The record feels like a sequence of movie scenes from start to finish: opener ‘The Walk Alone’ could accompany footage of Sean Connery as 007, perving on bikini-clad women outside a hotel pool. ‘London’ sounds like the merry-go-round scene from Mary Poppins – milk, cookies and vomit inducing innocence. ‘Running on Empty’ goes a bit ‘Greased Lightning’, but still makes it home in time for supper Read Review
A brilliantly crafted, hook-laden collection of songs that may be slightly too enthralled with '60s guitar pop to really make an impact in an '80s loving music scene, but deserves to be heard by a wider audience than their debut. Having Mark Ronson's name attached may seem like an obvious way of getting people to notice them Read Review
Its use of Walker Brothers baritone and Love-style brass, production courtesy of Mark Ronson and strings from Owen Pallett, sounds not dissimilar to the Last Shadow Puppets album Read Review
It wouldn’t be surprising if Mark Ronson's involvement as producer proves to be a divisive factor in people’s reaction to this record, perhaps complaining that it’s just more crass pop-up sounds hacked from musical history with his magpie ears. But that would be unfair Read Review
There is something very cheering about The Rumble Strips' adherence to the London likely lad persona at a time when all their brooding indie boy peers are re intoning gloomily about student loans Read Review
The band and Ronson have aimed for a widescreen panoramic sound, falling just short of the truly big picture Read Review
Their first album was widely regarded as being in thrall to Dexy's Midnight Runners but this second effort has moved from beneath Kevin Rowland's skirts and revealed the group as brave pioneers on the trail of wide-screen music for modern youth Read Review
A strong set of songs and an even stronger set of performances. The elements come together best on the slow-building title track and on Dem Girls, where Charlie Waller confirms that he’s a singer to be reckoned with Read Review
Mark Ronson’s uncluttered production works to his charges’ favour, most notably on the cinematically lovelorn title track Read Review
A melodramatic 21st-century Dexys Midnight Runners. This is no bad thing Read Review
The vast majority of this elegant Brit jangle feels a bit recycled. Read Review
The Rumble Strips: Welcome To The Walk Alone
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