1 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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Debut album featuring folk-influenced songs and four-part harmonies from the Sunderland-based quartet, co-produced by Field Music's Peter Brewis
6.5
A humorous synthesis of topical if improbable subject matter, ranging from a beekeeping folk song to a number about making pies out of people. To say The Cornshed Sisters' music is slightly peculiar would be something of an understatement Read Review
Filled with beguiling close-harmony tunes which wouldn't feel out of place on the Wicker Man soundtrack, and sound like venerable trad-arrs but are actually originals Read Review
Succumbs to its own whimsy, has no stylistic compass beyond the inherent tones of a female vocal harmony group and is a delightful series of songs that are both beautiful and bizarre Read Review
A personal, heartfelt commitment to music-making without care about fashion or fancy Read Review
Ultimately, Tell Tales wears its playfulness on its sleeve but never shies away from foregrounding its depths Read Review
With songs delivered in beautifully entwined voices, themes of lost loves and watery deaths tap deep into the area's musical heritage Read Review
Overall, their elegance and sincerity sells it, but only just Read Review
The emphasis is on the vocals, forefronted in a spare, organic production - the album is co-produced by Field Music's Peter Brewis Read Review
If anything the sisters take too traditional an approach. Print edition only
Present a world of perpetual tea-time on their wonky debut. Print edition only
There’s no doubt that the songs these spiritual sisters sing are lovely, but it’s their songwriting that remains lacking Read Review
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The Cornshed Sisters: Tell Tales
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 Virgin
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
Frankie Cosmos Different Talking
Different Talking introduces some novel elements to the Frankie Cosmos sound, but despite that, their core identity remains intact Spectrum Culture
U.S. Girls Scratch It
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
The album is a hesitant step in the right direction for the singer Slant Magazine
Virgin is Lorde at her best yet as an affective poet and, frustratingly, at her most tamed as a digital sound designer The Line Of Best Fit
The New York band’s sixth LP feels like a scaled-up team effort. The newly expansive sound suits Greta Kline’s hard-won self-knowledge Pitchfork
Lorde’s fourth album returns to the digital, physical sound of Melodrama. While rooted somewhat in her past, it’s a gritty, tender, and often transcendent ode to freedom and transformation Pitchfork
Her fourth album celebrates the messiness of being human – and is also her most compelling and revealing musicOMH
BC Camplight A Sober Conversation
It’s perhaps the finest release of his career from start to finish, and that’s beating some stiff competition Far Out
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