25 March 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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Debut album of retro 80s indebted synthpop from this Brooklynite singer
6.5
A tight little album full of melodramatic pop tunes dripping in ’80s loving Read Review
A fantastically arranged and conceptually exquisite record Read Review
Where Austra are detached and Zola Jesus are portentous, Class Actress are giddy and impassioned Read Review
Enlisting electronic sounds and feel-good disco hooks, this album has a definite touch of the early Madonna about it, and it feels like a delightfully guilty pleasure Read Review
Class Actress manage to pull this full length debut away from being nothing more than an exercise in retro or an indulgent pastiche. While it does take me back to that imaginary high school prom that I never had, it’s also very much a 21st century pop record Read Review
This record will appeal to the indie-dance crowds that love their retro flavours, but it does so in a natural way, without seeming forced or desperate to conform to a trend Read Review
Luxurious and picture-perfect in presentation Read Review
Chillwave never had much of a female presence, but Brooklyn's Class Actress aim to change that Read Review
Attempts to meld the trace-paper beats of chillwave with the predatory attitude of '80s funk-pop Read Review
Underneath the litany of angular instrumentation, Rapprocher is, both musically and narratively, conventional glam-pop fare, but it's difficult not to admire how well the bedazzled glove fits Read Review
Print edition only
Harper and her cohorts have certainly created a close approximation to the heyday of Depeche Mode and Human League-but ultimately their dated sound doesn't even come close Read Review
The vocals fill unadventurous melodies with inane lyrics. Utterly vacuous Read Review
Harper struggles to convince as seedy seductress or decadent ice queen. Print edition only
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Class Actress: Rapprocher
Underscores U
It’s a confident evolution from her 2020 EP Character Development!, with Grey producing an utterly refined sound that encapsulates the highs of the 2010 pop, bro-step and bubblegum bass eras The Quietus
Kim Gordon Play Me
She’s incorporating sounds and techniques that – and apologies for bringing age into it – most other septuagenarians would recoil from The Quietus
BTS ARIRANG
There’s a lot riding on the sensational K-pop group’s first album in four years, but its generic songs ring hollow and lack the vim and vigor of the band’s best work Pitchfork
It’s a scintillating experience, perhaps the moment where underscores fully out-strips her peers, and comes into her own Clash
Ladytron Paradises
Ladytron have produced an album that, from its inception, sought to invoke the same spirit that the band had 25 years ago Far Out
Gorillaz The Mountain
The strongest case in years that Gorillaz can still make records that matter as records Dork
'Play me' doesn’t try to comfort. It tries to provoke, energise and outlast the scroll Dork
The Orielles Only You Left
These songs come from months of demo-hoarding and forensic listening, the band archiving every practice-room spark before lovingly picking through the results Dork
James Blake Trying Times
Blake sounds energised by the room he has carved out for himself Dork
Harry Styles Kiss All The Time. Disco, Occasionally.
This isn’t an album built like a straight line from hook to hook. It moves in waves, often favouring texture and atmosphere over immediate release Dork
It’s technical excellence as a musical product cannot be overstated. For a pop album to be this busy yet possess a pocket as deep and rich as underscores displays here is simply amazing Sputnik Music (staff)
Indie rock icon Kim Gordon acerbically wrestles with the state of the world over hip-hop and industrial beats on Play Me PopMatters
The former electro-pop enfant terrible swings big on her latest album, compressing all her split personalities and eclectic tastes into a high-gloss, high-stakes gamble to remake pop on her own terms Pitchfork
On U, she finds a clearly-defined, rounded-out identity in her music for the first time, and she delivers the most immediate and the most robust work of her career The Line Of Best Fit
Performing, writing and producing everything herself, April Grey pares back her hyperpop electronics for an LP in thrall to 90s pop-R&B, with songs that big stars would die for The Guardian
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