4 July 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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Second album of updated age-old folk standards from the singer-songwriter and multi-instrumentalist
7.8
The marriage of ageless simplicity and avant-garde modernity ... is simply stunning. It’s creators are aware of where invention and understatement are best placed – the result is 42 transcendent minutes Read Review
It’s clear that this album is another complete success for the most interesting and promising folk musician in North America today Read Review
Much of I See the Sign's success can be chalked up to its arrangements, which are fractured and frequently off-kilter Read Review
An album that will reward the listener able to put aside preconceptions and admire its clever and successful fusion of styles, genres and musical traditions Read Review
The mostly traditional material covered here by Amidon is swathed in the string and horn arrangements of Nico Muhly and embellished with the worldly percussion and textural contributions of Shahzad Ismaily Read Review
A thing of beauty and a triumph of collaboration, its honesty and sincerity likely to thaw even the coldest of hearts Read Review
Moby reinvented vintage field recordings as space-age nightclub blues. Sam Amidon works similarly quirky alchemy here, reinventing public-domain songs as rustic mood music Read Review
Print edition only
A spiritual, and at times mournful, record with alluring tales of a man lost in the world Read Review
Overall, this at-first-shy but eventually overpowering record will make yer cheeks sting with wine and late-night gales Read Review
With the ability to integrate an R Kelly track into a record of traditional ballads, it’s quite clear that his imagination and confidence are growing with every record Read Review
It's somnambulistic stuff, with Amidon – his voice as gentle as a sigh – relishing his role as both saviour and slayer of songbooks past Read Review
While Amidon does add something new to the folk canon, perhaps it isn't quite enough Read Review
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Sam Amidon: I See The Sign
Lorde Virgin
Because for all the grand ideas here, it feels like Lorde has more to say about them, and as the aesthetic and songcraft of Virgin illustrates — almost despite all of this — she is more than skilled enough to do so Beats Per Minute
Frankie Cosmos Different Talking
Different Talking feels like Frankie Cosmos finally coming into its own. By self-producing, the band articulates a broader sound palette than on 2022’s Inner World Peace Northern Transmissions
A thrilling comeback that puts Lorde’s trajectory to the stars back on track DIY
Haim I quit
It’s easy to wonder if the soft-rock trio’s fourth record would be better if it were just a few songs — or, ideally, about 10-15 minutes — shorter Spectrum Culture
Hotline TNT Raspberry Moon
By opening up the recording process to accommodate more people and more ideas, Hotline TNT embrace a different side of themselves on Raspberry Moon, one that feels warmer and more open-hearted while still retaining the fuzz and noise that made their early albums so bracing Spectrum Culture
U.S. Girls Scratch It
While Scratch It lives up to its aged influences, Remy gives these nine tracks an undeniable immediacy, both with her singing and lyricism — which are eerily left of field — along with her spot-on taste in backing musicians and homage-motif Under The Radar
Loyle Carner hopefully!
The sounds are slightly different here than on previous albums and his tentative sojourn into singing is a success because his voice connects as easily as his rapping does Albumism
Lorde trades in her secrecy and mystique for a tremendously healing, desperately relatable record that cements her mark as her generation’s defining artist Northern Transmissions
On the uncomfortable paths of the 28-year-old’s fourth album, slam-dunk bangers are substituted with reinvention and restraint surrendered through hushed, reflective, and carnal synth-pop vestiges Paste Magazine
The New Zealand pop star chips away to reveal her purest self on her fourth album NME
For Lorde, it's an opportunity to reclaim something she thought she had lost long ago, but has always been within her: her true self Exclaim
Different Talking introduces some novel elements to the Frankie Cosmos sound, but despite that, their core identity remains intact Spectrum Culture
Musically Scratch It will probably be the least memorable in U.S Girls’ discography and aside from ‘Like James Said’ and ‘Bookends‘, the relatively thrill-less album does sort of fly by unnoticeably, made worse by the weak closing track No Fruit God Is In The TV
Lorde may not break entirely new ground on fourth album Virgin, but its warmth and texture make it consistently compelling and quietly brilliant The Skinny
yeule Evangelic Girl Is A Gun
A sun-drenched pop album — perhaps the pop record of the summer Under The Radar
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
Spiritbox Tsunami Sea
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