2 November 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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Ninth studio album and first in over seven years from the R&B artist featuring guest appearances from 21 Savage, Burna Boy, H.E.R., Jung Kook of BTS, Latto, Pheelz, The-Dream and Summer Walker
6.1
Usher’s ninth album is another impressive display of his endless charm and vocal chops. Thirty years into his career, the R&B icon still knows how to keep it light and throw a great party Read Review
The album hits its stride with a sequence of slow jams demonstrating that Usher is at the top of his game as a singer, still much more than a mere entertainer Read Review
The star’s sprawling, twenty-song LP is nostalgic and familiar as Usher leans into the past without making it feel stale Read Review
Lyrical foreplay isn’t exactly the singer’s strong suit on this throwback album full of percussive panting Read Review
‘COMING HOME’ competently portrays love as part Afrodisiac, part pulse-racing chase, part languorous and lived-in sensation Read Review
The album feels less driven by creative ingenuity or an aesthetic vision than by sheer showmanship Read Review
Vintage effects in the singer’s first album in eight years underline the degree to which he has been left behind Read Review
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Mount Eerie Night Palace
It’s an album that is as broken as it is beautiful, a balance that Elverum appears to be gleefully embracing. Print edition only Uncut
On Night Palace, Phil Elverum continues to muddy the idea of a musical identity, sounding closer to work he's released as The Microphones The Skinny
Phil Elverum seems to have made peace with impermanence on his latest, a sprawling 26-track double album Paste Magazine
Night Palace could easily be defined as Elverum’s wisest release. It contains the breadth of a career and of a life spent in dedication to compatible wavelengths, of sounds in the new. The Line Of Best Fit
The album defies easy categorization, which ultimately offers a welcome challenge Slant Magazine
Phil Elverum has long been the master of flowing journeys into the mind’s eye, and with Night Palace, a record of such substance that it takes a few listens to really make sense he’s produced one of his best yet Far Out
Fionn Regan O AVALANCHE
Realistically, this album can only ever be consumed as one, as very few tracks are individual enough to be enjoyed in isolation. Instead, this record is one large piece of emotive sound, which is great to listen to but exists in its best form in the confines of the record Far Out
The Co Wicklow musician’s seventh album is simply a beautiful piece of work The Irish Times
A little bit of beautifully bottled unshine, designed to keep the winter blues far away musicOMH
It’s cinematic and magical and stands as some of Fionn’s most captivating and compelling work to date Clash
Tyler, The Creator Chromakopia
An uncompromising honesty lies within this snapshot of an artist willing to share his chaos musicOMH
The Cure Songs Of A Lost World
Sixteen years after their last album, Robert Smith & co. return at their own glacial pace. Sounding regal, weary, and deliciously slow, they grapple with mortality and doubt as only they could Pitchfork
Soccer Mommy Evergreen
Sophie Allison’s fourth album is steeped in a loneliness darker than that of her youth, pairing raw reflections on grief with the most laid-back, pastoral music of her career Pitchfork
On his seventh album, Tyler is both mask-on and mask-off. It’s an electric, revealing, and perennially odd journey back into his aging psyche Pitchfork
Soccer Mommy wrestles with profound loss on her new record, which is more organic and grander than anything she has released before PopMatters
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
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
Dave We’re All Alone In This Together