2 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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Album No.6 from the California indie pop band led by Zach Smith and Rob Crow, their first release in five years
6.4
A downbeat delight Read Review
Delivers plenty of the gloomy/sunny/plaintive/happy pop that has made them one of the more instantly recognizable bands in the indie landscape Read Review
Sounds confident and deliberate, a consummate release from two deft musicians who’ve made every note count Read Review
Achieves an interesting balance between showcasing Pinback’s unique take on classic indie rock and offering something that’s immediately familiar Read Review
While it may be an album with a fairly prescribed pattern, it's one that is done so well and embellished so cutely, that it leaves you feeling an enormous sense of contentment Read Review
For an album of such wide-open sounds and ideas, Information Retrieved has a true knack for living in, and succeeding on, the smallest of details Read Review
Newfound self-assurance adding warmth to their melodic nous: sweet and soulful Read Review
While Pinback's latest effort isn't particularly poor, it's nothing to suggest they're exploring uncharted, original territory Read Review
There's something inherently nostalgic about Information Retrieved delivering exactly what you'd expect Read Review
Even at its coolest, Pinback’s music has never felt cold. Information Retrieved, though, rarely rises above lukewarm Read Review
This album doesn’t do enough to sound much more than merely pleasant Read Review
It is not often that you hope a band will stop playing to their strengths, but Information Retrieved leaves Pinback needing to do something unpredictable Read Review
Even the most ardent of fans may find themselves somewhat irked to be given essentially the same album, from the same band for the fourth time Read Review
Every listen to Pinback’s latest record is so forgettable due to its insistence on treading familiar ground track after track that you may as well have never heard it at all Read Review
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Pinback: Information Retrieved
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