6 October 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.
Browse specific styles
Debut full-length album from London-based R&B-influenced pop artist featuring a guest appearance by Jai Paul
7.9
The musician’s long-gestating debut album melds killer tunes to grimy distortion and the scuffed gloss of Jam and Lewis-era Janet Jackson, and marks the flowering of an original pop voice Read Review
This is one creatively askew pop-R&B delight after another, all voiced with captivating and confident flair by a razor-sharp songwriter Read Review
A near-effortless reinvention of retro pop, soul, funk, and R&B tracks with a glossy modern sheen, setting the stage for more grandiose statements in the future Read Review
The British pop artist dazzles with a suite of infectious tunes in various styles on a debut that’s been a long time coming Read Review
It serves as a formal introduction to an artist who has been on the side-lines for too long Read Review
The album centrepiece is the fateful “Stay With Me Through The Night”, which is a disco-era analogue to Franz Ferdinand’s “Take Me Out” with an impossibly on-point accordion hook Read Review
It broadly succeeds because her songs - worked on with R&B guv'nor Jai Paul and her father Pino, a seasoned session player, and siblings Rocco and Giancarla - are elegantly poised. Print edition only
Roll over video for more options
Snõõper Worldwide
Snooper are having a laugh, but you can tell they’re serious God Is In The TV
Worldwide is everything that a great rock album should be: chaotic, adrenaline-pumping, and infectious, but crucially, it isn’t pretending to be anything that it isn’t. For that, the Nashville group should be lauded among the most exciting rock and roll outfits out there at the moment Far Out
Snooper’s vision of egg punk is more hygienic; the full experience is still reserved for the stage. They’ve fantastically magnified a glimpse of that for larger crowds, but in the studio, Snooper aren’t as wild as we thought they were The Line Of Best Fit
The Nashville punk band shifts into high gear, expelling pent-up energy through warped instruments and tantalizing beats Paste Magazine
Snooper might not be having fun on Worldwide, but they make alienation served with an absurdist wink sound more entertaining than it has in some time All Music
Ash Ad Astra
An album brimming with hooks and energy, revealing a band that continues to embrace creative risks and push their sound forward even in the later stages of their career. XS Noize
Tim Wheeler's flair for crashing power-chord melodies and happy-sad lyrics remain undimmed. Print edition only Uncut
Ash balance the experimental and traditional like the seasoned pros they are. Ad Astra is a delight. Print edition only Record Collector
With ‘Ad Astra’, Ash are reflective yet revitalised, offering a colourful, charismatic, and cosmic offering that’s truly out of this world. Go grab a copy from a record store in a galaxy near you that is not too far, far away – you won’t regret it! Clash
Almost 30 years since Ash named their debut album 1977, after the year that Star Wars was released, the Force is still strong with these ones Kerrang!
Rocket R is for Rocket
Confident, strident guitar music, it’s a record that blends hugely effective songwriting with wicked production values, granting their work a crisp 90s-adjacent sheen that refuses to sacrifice their raw live endeavours Clash
Give it a few years, and they could be a force; their first album is just the start off the blocks in that journey Far Out
The band is definitely testing its boundaries and learning what it can hold. By the close, the record is less a declaration than a promise: Rocket is not flawless but they are compelling, and you kinda want to follow wherever they go next Northern Transmissions
With its bold twists and tones but grounded themes and songcraft, the LA band’s debut is in league with other fully realized guitar-hero debuts, like Guppy and Triple Seven Paste Magazine
Los Angeles four-piece Rocket deliver a promising debut album that’s got more going for it than nostalgia NME
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
Spiritbox Tsunami Sea
Self Esteem Prioritise Pleasure
Bob Dylan Rough and Rowdy Ways
Nick Cave And The Bad Seeds Skeleton Tree
Frank Ocean Channel Orange