25 June 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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The one-time Drive-By Trucker and leader of The 400 Unit with a 2nd solo album of introspective country rock songs
8.1
Listening to this stunning album will provide you with your own moment of clarity. Don’t let it slip away Read Review
For the most part Southeastern is pretty serious business. Then again, so is life and the one that Isbell has lived thus far is certainly worth documenting, especially when the songs supporting it are this stunning Read Review
An album worthy of his considerable talents. Each of the songs is a stunner Read Review
It’s a poignant, reflective, and very often frank portrayal of humanity’s dual impulses authored by someone who has lived several chapters, yet knows the story is constantly being rewritten Read Review
Isbell's best solo album thus far Read Review
Jason’s prose and perspective can at times be downright uncomfortable, but undeniable and rooted in a powerful truth about the way things are. This intensity never lets up for the duration of the record Read Review
Understated triumph. Print edition only
Vivid, multi-faceted tales of souls adrift Read Review
It's Isbell's best album yet Read Review
It's the little details that ring truest, one true line after another Read Review
Easily Isbell’s best solo album - his most richly conceived and generously written Read Review
Suggests that rehab has sharpened his country-rock storytelling Read Review
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Jason Isbell: Southeastern
Haim I quit
It’s nice to have them back and even nicer to feel that they have our backs when we go through another break up Northern Transmissions
Hotline TNT Raspberry Moon
Will Anderson’s latest album is proof that things often end up better with some help from your friends. The resulting songs are startlingly optimistic, accessible, gritty, and warm Paste Magazine
Little Simz Lotus
Like the blooming lotus on the album’s cover, Little Simz appears to be emerging from dark waters Spectrum Culture
On their fourth album I quit, HAIM are all about reclaiming their space and striking out on their own The Skinny
Loyle Carner hopefully!
The influence of having children can be felt across Loyle Carner's beautiful and personal hopefully !, showing his progress not just as an artist but as a person too The Skinny
Pulp More
With a collection of memorable songs offering observations on life with both a singular wit and obvious care for its subjects, Pulp clearly still feel comfortable on More flourishing at the high bar they set for themselves long ago Under The Radar
In lesser hands it’d be a slog of a hodgepodge. But with musicians as accomplished, daring, and pop savvy as this (and let’s not forget their good taste in influences), I Quit hardly shows a seam. If anything, it’s further proof that HAIM is the most thrillingly versatile band working today Under The Radar
The trio seems torn between embracing mainstream pop or following their bolder instincts Slant Magazine
What Pulp haven’t lost is their innate Englishness: ballads recall grocery shops, summer festivals, and farmers’ markets, but the results are disappointing PopMatters
The mid-tempo results and on-the-nose lyrics can wear thin over 15 tracks, but Haim's melodic ease provides fitful featherweight uplift. Print edition only Record Collector
I Quit subtly pushes their boundaries. Print edition only Mojo
May not be the band at their peak, but it’s a necessary step to close one chapter of their career and find their way to the next. It leaves listeners with the sense that HAIM is going to rise from the ashes of what didn’t serve them, onto bigger and better things A.V. Club
On their first LP written as a full band, the New York shoegazers swing for the rafters. It’s their most polished and ambitious album yet, wielding a super-sized sound fit for super-sized feelings Pitchfork
Will Anderson’s New Yorkers have found glossier, cleaner ways to put old things together and make them work musicOMH
From the cathartic harmonies of ‘Julia’s War’ to the raw romance of ‘Candle’, there is a gritty optimism charging through the album, hitting you right in the gut and demanding you pull back the veil on past dread and expose a new outlook of forward-thinking hopefulness Clash
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