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.
Browse specific styles
Debut album of pop rock from the French five piece famed for their energetic live shows
6.4
The Concrete Knives will be a nice addition to the Bella Union family as they fit right in by not fitting in, instead, carving their own path while instructing us to do the same Read Review
It’s exuberant, lively in most parts and features a whole raft of musical styles with the underpinning of an urgent need to keep a rhythm going Read Review
They're wholeheartedly fun with an incessant joy for life and youth Read Review
A smart, well-executed set of staccato dance-rock anthems that flirt with excess, yet never overstay their welcome Read Review
The Caen fivesome largely dispense with language and let the treble dials do the talking. Print edition only
The earnestness and warmth of the thing succeeds in making the record almost as addictive and loveable to hear as it clearly was to perform Read Review
An impressive debut with a crate-load of ideas Read Review
Like a less wimpy Of Monsters and Men, the Caen quintet pursue a line in male/female-fronted indiepop that occasionally flirts with the solemn side of the genre Read Review
There’s colour and youth splashed all over these songs: noodly guitars chime with steel drums Read Review
The tail end of the record does come to a bit of a standstill Read Review
So chipper and catchy it comes over like an indie version of Alphabeat Read Review
French indie collective attempt to shout you into submission. Print edition only
Stakes a claim for quirk-pop supremacy. Print edition only
Melody rich, this album is in fact too much so and will leave you feeling bloated on its sickly candy Read Review
Roll over video for more options
Concrete Knives: Be Your Own King
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