26 February 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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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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Tate McRae So Close To What
Confident, assured and revelling in her pop dreams Dork
Panda Bear Sinister Grift
Presenting with a breezy, lived-in warmth DIY
The Murder Capital Blindness
An album that feels both urgent and timeless DIY
Youth Lagoon Rarely Do I Dream
Trevor Powers wants you to get lost in the album, and he makes it impossibly easy to take the bait Spectrum Culture
There’s very little sinister about Sinister Grift, at least, not in the album’s warm and glimmering instrumentation. And that unsteady ground — of appearances versus what’s under the hood — only adds to the mystique and enjoyment of Panda Bear’s music Under The Radar
On his seventh album as Panda Bear, Noah Lennox delivers ten meticulously crafted songs, exploring a new thematic territory that's bittersweet but buoyant The Skinny
They're lean and immediate in nature, with melodic ease that belies lyrics awash with loss, uncertainty, regret, overwhelm and defeat, feelings that sit on the surface, undisguised. Print edition only Uncut
Perfectly sequenced, Sinister Grift's dubious uplift gradually falls away to reveal an exquisite melancholy introspection, the sound of optimism weighted by mooring hooks of sadness. Print edition only Mojo
On her third album, the Canadian singer and dancer amps up the 2000s influence and dials up the sex. Though it’s her most mature release yet, the music still sounds tedious and reheated Pitchfork
Saya Gray Saya
There are some self-consciously experimental moments, but the Toronto musician’s genre-mashing songs of heartbreak are often focused and fresh The Guardian
On her second album, the Japanese-Canadian musician’s magpie art pop coheres into something like a traditional breakup record, but her perspective and production are far from conventional Pitchfork
Canadian alt-pop artist's debut matches sonic surrealism with defiantly vulnerable lyrics Rolling Stone
A vivid and vulnerable album, brimming with emotional depth DIY
The Japanese-Canadian musician’s sophomore LP is a breakup exercise full of epic, idiosyncratic stories of farewell and mourning cut up into an all-encompassing and all-evading menagerie of trip-hop, psych-folk, prog-rock, glitch-tronica and dubby fusion Paste Magazine
Tate and her team clearly have an ear for sticky melodies and the lack of necessary lore is appreciated, but there still is a very pervasive sense of figuring things out here Sputnik Music (staff)
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