8 February 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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Daphni Butterfly
Snaith largely maintains the requisite club-friendly bpm rates while deftly integrating more surprising elements. Print edition only Uncut
A sprawling Daphni DJ set in microcosm, Butterfly is feel-good music of the purest kind. Print edition only Mojo
It might already be the most relentlessly feel-good album of 2026. DIY
Butterfly feels less like a fusion of Daphni and Caribou, and more like an uninhibited manifestation of Snaith's ever-changing tastes and proclivities Exclaim
It may only be February, but this already feels like a defining electronic record of the year Clash
Mandy, Indiana URGH
It’s also chaotic and messy, but also catchy. This is not an album, or band, to sleep on in 2026 Clash
The noise-rock band’s second album is a breakthrough: insidiously catchy, incomprehensibly groovy, and fueled by righteous fury Pitchfork
Ratboys Singin' To An Empty Chair
Bringing their country-tinted indie rock to boundless new landscapes, the Chicago band returns with their most emotionally affecting and compositionally advanced songs to date Pitchfork
A wonderful album that shows Ratboys revving their engine once again, ready to take another long, curious lap around the block PopMatters
Joyce Manor I Used to Go to This Bar
The pop-punk institution Joyce Manor emphasize melody on another hooky collection of melancholy-tinged anthems PopMatters
Geologist Can I Get a Pack of Camel Lights?
You might expect that pulling one part away from the whole would leave you with something solitary, but Weitz’s departure from his proverbial and literal ‘collective’ does not reduce him to a singularity. Instead, he emerges as a complex sum of parts all of his own The Quietus
A fresh glittering chromatic beast of shimmering synths and rhythms forged through industrial wreckage The Line Of Best Fit
What would you say to someone who isn’t there? The band spends their latest album breaking through these barriers, liberated by the knowledge that they tried Under The Radar
Since the lyrics are in French, only those fluent will pick up specific references, but the sound throughout is scarred and wounded The Arts Desk
On the Mancunian-Parisian band’s second album, the noise rockers escalate the grit that defined their debut Paste Magazine
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