12 October 2026
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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Bloc Party Anatomy Of A Brief Romance
Bloc Party’s new album is catchy in the worst possible way: strange, irritating and hard to shake for all the wrong reasons Still Listening
Teenage Fanclub Do Not Dare To Dream
The key term here is immediate, as Norman Blake and Raymond McGinley who keep holding the Teenage Fanclub ship have gone for a more layered concept here, instinctively or intentionally, as the listeners have to keep peeling the layers to get to the essence here, and that peeling is quite worth every listener’s time Spill Magazine
Cameron Winter Live at Carnegie Hall
Live at Carnegie Hall inevitably calls back to the great artists who have graced that stage before him, though the pensiveness of the recording is equally impactful, capturing Cameron Winter staying true to his nature Northern Transmissions
Troye Sivan She's The Best
The Australian singer broadens the sexy, sultry queer pop formula he cultivated on his last record, but loses some of its novelty and edge as he strains to go bigger and outdo himself Paste Magazine
Fontaines D.C. Dopamine Chamber
As Dublin’s finest reach stadium level, album five dives deeper into the extremes of ‘Romance’ for a dark but exhilarating reflection of end times NME
Remi Wolf Mud
Wolf shines through Mud thanks to the album's ambiguities and complexities. Much like a mud bath, it's messy — but ultimately healing Exclaim
Johnny Marr The Age of Everything
The Age of Everything isn’t the first of Johnny Marr’s solo albums to be able to stand on its own merits, but it’s the one that does it most confidently, a polished, consistent record on which he becomes a singer and guitarist rather than a singing guitarist Spectrum Culture
Pet Shop Boys A Man from the Future
There couldn’t be a more perfect band to realise this tragic story in music The Arts Desk
Only Neil Tennant and Chris Lowe could have made this concept album exploring the life of codebreaking genius Alan Turing, which updates their 2014 prom with spoken words and revised music musicOMH
What took Pet Shop Boys so long to release this wonderful album? The Irish Times
It is a piece of faultless art and a perfectly pitched tribute to one man and his achievements, whose crushingly sad story of how the world can treat a man who changed the world, could have been delivered by no other act God Is In The TV
After the surreal technicolour dreams of 'Romance', Fontaines D.C. have landed back on Earth to dissect our fractured reality. The result is something truly special Rolling Stone UK
There are certainly pleasures to be found on the album, but the singer himself seems to get lost Slant Magazine
The latest album from the Scottish band settles into pleasant but predictable folk-rock doldrums Pitchfork
It is an unpretentious record from one of the UK’s most influential guitar players, and all the more effective for it No Ripcord
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
Rosalía Lux
Kendrick Lamar Damn.
D'Angelo And The Vanguard Black Messiah
Nick Cave And The Bad Seeds Ghosteen
Spiritbox Tsunami Sea
Self Esteem Prioritise Pleasure
Hayley Williams Ego Death At A Bachelorette Party
Bob Dylan Rough and Rowdy Ways